Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend
by Caidron
Summary: A disillusioned master manipulator returns from Third Impact to forge a new future. Time travel. Lore. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 1**

 _ **Again.**_

 **2015 A.D., NERV HQ**

Gendo Ikari surveyed the stillness below him with the detached, analytical eye he had honed over his lifetime as an academic turned paramilitary leader. The enormous head of Evangelion Unit-01, the synthetic humanoid he and his compatriots had sweated their blood and very _souls_ to build, jutted up stoically from the reservoir submerging the rest of its reinforced steel shell.

75 meters of incomprehensible terror waiting quietly, patiently, for her pilot.

The lights around him died in a series of audible clicks. Sharp cracks of disengaging electrical connectors echoed from wall to wall, their fading sound broken by the gentle ripples in the reservoir beneath him. Emergency signage, glowing in bright but small bursts around the vast cavern, feebly pushed back against the all-encompassing darkness.

Gendo noted his sudden discomfort.

That was new.

He concentrated on breathing, his senses straining: in, out. Repeat. Listen.

The muffled sound of a distant motor grew closer.

Gendo knew exactly who was being ferried across the lake of dense liquid surrounding the Eva cages, and why. The boat would dock at any moment on the other side of the enormous walls bracing the behemoth's shoulders. Events would play out according to plan. According to his _scenario_.

He would soon see his son, at last. After all this... _time_.

With a last thrum of power the watercraft's gas engine died and he could suddenly make out voices on the other side of the entrance. A door quickly opened, admitting three silhouetted figures walking carefully along the barely lit walkway below.

He could just make out Ritsuko stopping in place and reaching into her lab coat. He squeezed his eyes shut just in time for her to palm a hand-held switch.

The sheer brightness of the reengaged floodlights managed to blind him through his eyelids, but he carefully forced them open and caught sight of Shinji's reaction just as the boy yelped, stunned by Evangelion Unit-01's faceplate right in front of him.

Gendo admired Ritsuko's sense for the theatrical: throwing Shinji into the deep-end without warning was a powerful psychological weapon. He chuckled slightly, appreciating that Shinji didn't feint outright at the astonishing sight the Project-E director had just unveiled. Knowing Ritsuko she was probably disappointed she hadn't managed to get a bigger scream out of him.

In fact, what was that look on his face? Gendo wondered. It was inscrutable - not fear - but something. He couldn't tell from his high-up vantage point. He had chosen the spot carefully, knowing his voice would be amplified by the surface of the liquid below, and from the platform up and off to the side he could watch unseen for a little while.

He had originally considered using the protected service shaft directly above the beast's head, but had dismissed the idea. The corrugated steel stairs next to him allowed for closing the distance to the group below if he so chose; that same distance, on the other hand, would maximize his established image as the illusive, commanding presence he had so carefully cultivated among the rank and file.

Ritsuko and Captain Katsuragi flanked the young boy on either side. He adjusted his tinted glasses with a gloved hand, listening to the doctor's matter-of-fact explanation of the "synthetic humanoid."

The conversation was reaching the point in the script where he was supposed to step in and crush his son's blossoming hope for any sort of meaningful reunion; another blow to a broken Shinji Ikari. Another step to becoming an involuntary extension of Gendo's will.

A puppet of a puppet. SEELE's plaything.

A wind-up toy soldier carefully crafted to initiate Third Impact and sweep humanity into a new age; born again into an afterlife of unity and singular consciousness - a new godhead, a new gospel. Old men turned into the masters of humanity's collective consciousness.

 _Fools_.

Ritsuko's voice lifted up in pride as she finished introducing the cyborg: " _This_ is Evangelion Unit-01. Humanity's last hope for survival."

"Is this part of my father's work?" Shinji asked, timidly, but not yet fully overwhelmed.

It was time.

"Yes," Gendo said firmly, his voice resonating from above the trio. Blue eyes locked on blue as he looked down at his son. "I've missed you, Shinji." His voice trailed off, perhaps more gently than he had intended.

The boy gasped softly, recognizing the faraway figure, "Dad…"

Gendo nodded, hand gripping the railing and his gaze sharply flicking between Captain Katsuragi and Dr. Akagi: "We're moving out!"

"Moving out?!" Misato exclaimed, looking to Ritsuko for confirmation, "Unit-00's still in cryo-stasis, isn't it?"

Shinji could only continue looking up at his father, still confused by the earlier words of acknowledgement. A long-buried hope had rekindled, causing him to partially miss the beginning of Captain Katsuragi's worried questioning.

"Wait a second, you're planning to use Unit-01?"

Gendo watched Shinji's eyes rip themselves back over to the purple, metal-plated monstrosity in front of him at Misato's question. He sighed inwardly, thankful that he could still read his son's emotions like a book, and that the good captain still maintained fairly predictable responses.

Not that he could count on that for too long, but it was, in this moment at least, comforting.

"There isn't any other way," Ritsuko replied, the conversation between the two adult women now being carried on over the adolescent Shinji's head. Gendo could already see how Ritsuko was setting up to deliver the news about Shinji's new role. Her well-trained professionalism. The sense of detachment she stiffly held to. Inspired, no doubt, by the way he himself dealt with her in public.

"Rei can't do it, can she? We don't have a pilot!" Misato exclaimed, and that's when Gendo found his second cue.

"Yes, we do," Gendo interrupted.

They all looked up at him.

"I will be the pilot."

* * *

 **Year Indeterminate - Post-Third Impact.**

Emptiness, without form. Neither dark, nor light – absence. No thoughts, no feelings. No action. No reaction.

Light. Whiteness, all encompassing, omnipresent, everywhere, filling, within, without. A sense of separation, of being apart.

Confusion/Wrongness/Incorrectness/Problem/Error.

 _Something wrong_.

 _Something is wrong, with me_.

 _I…_

 _I am…_

אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה.

Gendo Ikari's consciousness began to return.

To his surprise, and partially the surprise was being able to even comprehend that he _was_ surprised, he was also aware of both states: being unaware and aware at the same time. He recognized that the transitionary effect was much like watching one color fade into another. The latter gradually overpowering the former without the ability to mark the moment where one actually _became_ the other.

The feeling of detached curiosity grew to a studious inquiry as he inventoried how his consciousness was layering more complex behaviors and emotions together in a gestalt rebuild of his baseline mentality. A matrix of some sort had come into being, resembling the biological construct of a human brain, though intangible.

It was a mathematical object meant to be mapped into the physical realm. As a student of metaphysics he knew he was uniquely equipped to understand what was happening and a pulse of external warmth/agreement/acceptance welcomed his self-confident analysis.

The sense of externality was the clue he had needed to identify his own self as a separate _independence_. But in order to even notice that he was coming to exist in such a state, that meant he must be borrowing the equivalent of processing power from the collective consciousness of a post-Third Impact humanity to view, from an outside perspective, the recreation of his "self" even as his actual mind was bound to the internal perspective.

Another pulse of agreement/reward greeted his observation even as the external view began binding to the internal view, blurring the boundaries. Memories of his own post-doctoral thesis, particularly a set of postulates about the behavior of consciousness arising from vacuum-state quantum probability synthesis, arranged themselves neatly in ordered conclusions he was now able to access.

He was, to be vulgar, currently a "brain-in-a-jar." In an infinite vacuum with infinite time eventually all manner of possible events would occur, thanks to quantum mechanics, including the coming-into-existence of the mind of a person who had existed at some point in the universe's timeline. Or who hadn't.

Gendo recognized that his current "rebuild" was likely one of infinitely many such combinatorial events that had occurred since Third Impact. The issue with the theory, of course, is that all possible derivatives of Gendo Ikari would eventually spawn themselves, including ones that had mild or vast differences: a multiverse of possible Gendo Ikaris.

However, post-Third Impact humanity had the advantage of existing in the equivalent of quantum-soup: a sea of potential on top of a foundation of shared memory. It emulated the spontaneous-vacuum theory perfectly except that recreations would be bound to whatever was stored in the substrate of Instrumentality.

If something even close to Gendo Ikari appeared it would instantly map itself onto the essence of the actual Gendo Ikari that had been preserved in the so-called Human Instrumentality Project. This was the core idea of the Doors of Guf.

Thus, unlike the many human minds that had undoubtedly come before, Gendo Ikari knew _exactly_ what to do with his newly reborn consciousness. The entire framework for managing a self-identifying existence had been his thesis, after all.

The uneducated called it a _soul_.

And with the full resources of Instrumentality at his disposal - given his mind being the only one currently organized in a persistent state - he guided the rebuild process to recreate a physical form to store the newborn matrix holding his reorganized soul.

Gendo Ikari suddenly: was.

His first corporeal thought was the memory of a monster's green eyes and sharp teeth biting into him. Shinji's judgment. Or was it Yui's?

 _Yui_.

He cast out in the infinite expanse looking for her, prepared to reassemble her from the ocean of memory and bring about her resurrection at long last.

He was dismayed to be unable to find her amidst the vast Host. He surged through the extra-dimensional space seeking out compatible memories or constructs that might explain the discrepancy in his expectations.

 _Where was she, and why?_

Time passed, but time was meaningless.

Gendo had recreated and integrated approximately 144,000 tangentially related humans in his search, aggregating their memories and experiences into a queryable state before releasing the majority back into the mindless collective. Twelve remained to help him collate the amassed data - to look for answers.

And the answers he found were unsatisfying: disturbing, even.

Yui had never intended to be part of Third Impact. She was still in the standard space-time continuum encased within Eva Unit-01, by her own design. Some sort of martyred eternal testament to humanity's existence.

She had chosen to drift through the ether, alone.

Her rejection stung.

Shinji was missing as well. And the pilot of Eva Unit-02.

He doubted Yui had intended _that_ , however. After all, what about the new world she had promised Shinji she would make for him? Had she somehow taken them both with her into Unit-01?

Doubtful.

An Adam and Eve scenario, perhaps? It matched her sense of grand gestures and humanistic romanticism.

But surely she wouldn't be so cruel? Their old world was barren. Poisoned. Dead.

In the back of his mind an itch had developed, growing ever stronger in passing from moment to moment. Since discovering Yui's fate it had only grown more distracting. He attempted to cut it off repeatedly only for it to redevelop stubbornly, a lingering desire festering like a growing boil beneath his skin despite all attempts to ignore it.

The collective mind of humanity was not as entirely mindless as he had supposed. Some sort of low-level group-thought was still occurring between the billions of stored souls.

"It" had taken notice of his individuality.

"It" approved/was jealous/lusted-after him.

Humanity, in this state, was miserable - worse - it was conscious of its own torturous existence.

He could predict the eventual outcome of the souls trapped in Instrumentality; the ennui giving way to exhaustion and eventual homogenization. Rather than all people becoming united in one mind and becoming a new sort of god they had simply... canceled the majority out, absorbing the mundane into a dwindling pool of entropy while the creative remnants mentally starved their way to madness.

It was their own heat-death. All the information would be lost. They would be immortal, yes, but without meaning. They would be one. Then zero.

Gendo understood it then, that humanity desired to reject Instrumentality but it was far too late: the key, his son, was gone.

Just as that last despondent thought made itself obvious he received a _visitor_.

"Hello, Gendo Ikari," the grey-haired Angel greeted, politely.

"Tabris?" he asked, unsure of what to say or do in such an unlikely situation.

The angel shook its head and held out its arm, vaguely gesturing towards the substrata that made up the remains of humanity. "Would you save them? If you had the power?"

They stood together in the void, looking upon the sins of a dying race.

"I would."

* * *

 **2015 A.D., NERV HQ**

"I will be the pilot."

Ritsuko's lips were frozen mid-part, she had just been about to proclaim Shinji as Rei's replacement pilot. Misato's attention was suddenly fully focused on their leader: "Sir?"

Shinji joined her, gawking. "Father?"

Gendo took a step down the maintenance stairs, keeping a level gaze as he made his way towards them.

"Captain, begin preparations to launch Eva Unit-01 with myself as its pilot, is that understood?"

Dr. Akagi's lips began working again. "But Commander, that isn't what we…"

"Captain Katsuragi, do you understand?" he queried, more forcefully, daring the young purple-haired woman to defy him and shutting Ritsuko down at the same time.

"Sir, yes sir!" Misato's response was suddenly crisp, though she dared a side-glance at a gob-smacked Dr. Akagi.

Gendo paid the errant glance to his confidant no heed. "Good. Repelling the Angel is our first priority," he said, easily stealing a line from a memory long past. His footsteps continued clacking atop the metal as he descended.

"But Commander, the Eva isn't designed for pilots not chosen by the Marduk Institute!"

Ritsuko had finally managed to arrange a logical argument and given voice to it. She couldn't outright defy the Commander, especially in public, but her extraordinary confusion about his direction, coupled with the feeling of being left-out of his decision-making, let alone the knowledge that his command was _utter nonsense_ had sent her spiraling out of what little comfort-zone she had managed to insulate herself in.

She _knew_ Evas only worked for children born after Second Impact. And Eva-01 would _only_ work for Shinji. She even knew _why_ , no matter how much she _hated_ knowing.

Misato wisely kept her mouth shut and Shinji was too shocked to contribute. Gendo could see the boy was nearly shutting down in the manner his so-called "teacher" had documented in his annual status updates.

"Dr. Akagi, I acknowledge your concern," he was already at the bottom of the stairs and moving towards her, "We both understand how the Marduk Institute operates. I will explain soon." He paused, searching her face as they were now only a meter apart. "Trust me." It was a command, but she heard the question in it and nodded despite herself.

Shinji, meanwhile, had his head fully tucked down now and was desperately tracing the shapes of each bolt in the steel plates rather than look up at his father who was, physically, closer to him than he had ever been since he was a child. Gendo understood the intimidating affect he was having and wisely paused next to Ritsuko while Misato barked orders into her walkie-talkie further back.

The young boy stood, isolated, in front of the Eva, trying to cope with his inner expectations and hopes. His entire day had been filled, save the brief moments of terror above-ground when the Angel had nearly killed him, with nothing but thoughts of what would happen when he met his father again. The thousands of different things he could say, _wanted to say_ , were all desperate to come out.

The intercoms came to life as technicians relayed Misato's orders, almost obscuring Shinji's quiet voice.

"Father…" Shinji murmured, "Why did you send for me?"

Gendo hadn't been sure that Shinji would ask that question, given how things were already changing from their first encounter in the original timeline. So in front of Unit-01, in front of _her_ , he reached out a hand and rested it on Shinji's shoulder as he bent down in front of him, waiting for his son to look up at him.

Ritsuko couldn't believe what was happening. Gendo could tell. Her whole body had gone rigid in shock right next to him, but he kept his concentration on Shinji.

"Son."

Shinji looked up.

"Son," he tasted the words carefully as he said them, "Shinji. I don't know if I'm coming back. There isn't time to explain, but I wanted to give you a chance to _see_." His hand left Shinji's shoulder and swept out to the stony visage of Eva Unit-01.

"I wanted you to see what I had to do. What your mother _had to do._ " His words ground out of his mouth, frustration and loathing crumbling like gravel across his lips. "We built this to protect you."

Shinji stared at him, unable to speak. Misato's hand had drifted to her side, the walkie-talkie still thumbed on, as she considered the commander's words. Ritsuko, for her part, had taken a few steps back, unable to handle the utterly uncharacteristic actions of the man who had warmed her bed for more than a year.

She thought she knew the man, Gendo Ikari, but this emotion-showing impostor - _openly_ comforting his son - was an impossibility.

"Protect... all of you." Gendo had just completed his spoken half-thought when an explosion roiled the underground cavern. "Damn," he bit out, "It's here."

The lights flickered briefly before another explosion, much closer, sent a shockwave across the ceiling that crumpled steel plates and broke support beams loose.

Misato managed a warning yell: "Watch out!"

Gendo reacted instinctively, shoving Shinji forward into Misato's arms, her walkie-talking sent flying into the pool while behind him Ritsuko fell on her back, watching in mute horror as heavy debris rained down on the commander's prone position. She squeezed her eyes shut, certain she knew how the nightmare would end.

Liquid splashed on her face and a rushing sound filled the air briefly before the sharp clangs of metal striking metal reverberated through the Eva's cage.

She opened her eyes, catching a flash of orange light.

Gendo sat on his haunches awkwardly but calmly, his eyes centered on Unit-01's impassive face. A giant metal hand was frozen in place above his head, shielding him from the fallen steel columns that had heavily dented the walkway after their brief free-fall. He mouthed something silently.

In the background technicians were hurriedly speaking over the intercoms:

"The Eva Moved! What's going on?" the first yelled.

"It broke the left arm restraint!" the second responded with a voice steeped in disbelief.

Gendo carefully came to his feet, ducking under the frozen hand of the giant, and moved to pull Ritsuko up. Shinji's head was buried, somewhat comically he noted, into Captain Katsuragi's ample chest. The moment passed and the two shifted as Shinji craned around to see what had happened.

Ritsuko desperately wanted to understand. "This is impossible, Gendo…" forgetting her station for a moment she pulled herself into him, "It didn't even have an entry plug inserted!"

Misato loosened her grip on Shinji and stared at the Eva. "It worked without an interface… or was it, was it protecting him?"

She looked between her friend Ritsuko and the stoic elder Ikari. Her belief in the mission, and their leader, surging.

"We can do it." Her determination was renewed.

Shinji heard Misato's words and pushed himself free, still shaken, but at least able to stand.

Gendo straightened, maintaining one arm around Ritsuko's waist as he pushed his glasses back into place with a finger of his other hand.

"Ready the Eva, we launch at once."


	2. Chapter 2

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 2**

 _ **In the Belly of the Beast.**_

 **2015 A.D., NERV HQ**

"Captain, take my son to the command deck," Gendo ordered as he pivoted around, pulling Ritsuko with him. "Dr. Akagi will escort me to the entry plug."

He had let go of her waist and started walking towards the exit opposite them when his son shouted out, "Father! Wait! I don't understand what's going on!"

Gendo stopped with a sharp click of his heel and turned his head just enough to answer.

"You will soon. Captain," he shot a determined look at her over his shoulder, "Move." Ritsuko, meanwhile, quickened her pace to catch up to the Commander. He was already halfway through the exit door now.

Misato grabbed Shinji's hand and tugged at him authoritatively. "Come with me Shinji, you can see everything from upstairs."

His weak protests were quickly drowned out by the resumed intercom chatter as the maintenance crews took over preparing for the Eva, which included draining the utility reservoir. Gendo and Ritsuko stepped out of the Eva's cage just as torrents of red fluid began rushing from escape hatches dozens of meters below them.

The roaring sound of multiple waterfalls was deafening, preventing a frustrated Ritsuko from being able to question the commander of NERV until they had at last entered an elevator and the doors had closed behind them.

"Gendo, what is going on!?" she demanded, poking a finger into his chest. He slumped just a bit, resting his back against the elevator wall. He didn't even have a chance to respond before her hands were clenched back in her lab coat pockets and her mini-tirade continued. "How was that even possible? How did Unit-01 move? Why is Shinji even here if he's not piloting? We talked about this! What's going on?!"

All the while Ritsuko was scanning his face carefully for the tics and tells she had divined over the years in his normally implacable façade. With each bulleted question she was more and more shocked to not see his usual detached, cold stare - that brutal, condescending stare - he almost looked... tired?

"Ritsuko…" he began, one glove hand going up to his beard, pulling down on his cheeks, "I haven't had time to explain anything to you." He looked at her and she straightened, hands still buried protectively in her lab coat as the elevator's floor-marker clicked with each ascended floor.

"Then explain!"

He stepped forward quickly, shocking her, and she quickly tried to pull her hands out of her pockets but couldn't quite get them out before he was pressed against her, one arm wrapped strongly around her back and shoulder while the other held the back of her head. For the briefest moments she panicked, thinking, given his unpredictable behavior, that he had snapped and might hurt her.

Gendo, on the other hand, had carefully noted the position of the elevator's security camera when they had boarded and his face was now on the other side of Ritsuko's head, obscuring his lips as he whispered directly into her ear.

"I need your help. I'll explain after, but they're watching. The old men. They lied to us. About _everything_."

He didn't have time to say anything else before the elevator chimed and he released her, moving through the opening doors with a brisk energy that belied the earlier weakness he had shown her.

Ritsuko was left frozen for a moment, the hairs on her neck standing up, before she gathered her wits and finally freed her hands from her pockets, rushing out of the lift to follow the commander's confident pace.

She realized they were on the pilots' level where they scrubbed-in for deployment. _He's serious,_ she thought, _he's really doing this_. They passed the showers and came to the enclosed hallway that led to the entry plug's gantry.

"Commander, you don't have a plug suit," she chided, "Or A-10 connectors."

He nodded, pausing again before entering the deployment corridor and reaching up to tug on his lapel. The doctor's eyes went wide as he unzipped his outer jacket and swiftly shrugged it off.

"Gendo, what are you…" she tripped on her words.

He smiled ruefully, removing his pants now, "Aren't you always saying you wish we didn't have to make pilots wear plug suits?" His pants were off and he was working on his shoes now. "To lower the mental interference between pilot and Eva?"

Her day had run the gamut of terrifying to surreal in less than an hour and all she could do was nod, reciting her own arguments: "The A-10 connectors help, but direct contact of skin-to-LCL has always been shown to be… um, best."

Gendo was standing naked now, looking at her expectantly. "Towel?"

"What?" she managed.

"Towel," he said, pointing behind her at the bin of stacked, white towels emblazoned with the red NERV logo.

She goggled at him, reaching over and handing it to him.

"I'll take it off when I'm in the plug," he assured her, misunderstanding her halting actions for worry about his possible synchronization rate and interference from the sheet of cottony material. Ritsuko, meanwhile, was dealing with the fact that she had so casually gotten to see her erstwhile lover in the nude, _at work_. It was incredibly distracting. A not insignificant portion of her brain was replaying every intimate moment they had spent together – with the lights _always_ off – and wondering…

Her lab coat buzzed suddenly as her cell phone went off, completely derailing her line of thought.

"Akagi." She answered tersely.

"Ritsuko! Shinji is up here with me on the bridge, where are you? Where's the commander?" Misato asked hurriedly on the other side of the line.

"We're in the pilots' prep room," Ritsuko answered. She could hear her subordinate Maya asking Shigeru to do something with the comms in the background. "The commander is about to head to the entry plug."

Misato was quick to respond, "Good, OK, hold on, the Vice Commander wants to speak with the Commander, here." The phone scrabbled its sound as it switched hands and Ritsuko thumbed the speaker-phone button as Gendo finished securing the towel around his waist.

"Ikari? Are you there?" the older voice asked. Ritsuko had expected Fuyutsuki to be acting a little more surprised or concerned, but his tone was almost curious.

"Yes," Gendo replied, invoking the magic words he had saved for just such an occasion, "Fuyutsuki, I'm adjusting the scenario."

A moment passed.

"Understood."

 _What._ Ritsuko mutely handed Gendo the phone when he reached an outstretched hand towards her. He turned off the speaker and made the conversation one-sided.

"Turn off the entry-plug cameras. Leave the audio. I'm... going in without a plug suit," Gendo explained.

"Ah." Fuyutsuki replied simply. Gendo heard a finger-snapping sound in the background as his friend got the attention of the bridge personnel. "Turn off the entry-plug cameras," he heard Fuyutsuki relay to a chorus of crisp acknowledgements.

"Done."

"Good, thank you."

He heard Fuyutsuki breathe in carefully, ready to ask the question he had put off, "Are you certain you know what you're doing?" The Vice Commander had asked quietly so the regular staff couldn't hear.

"Yes. I'm certain."

"Well…" Fuyutsuki trailed off, "Say 'hello' for me?"

Gendo took the coded question as an acknowledgement that his sudden change in the scenario was acceptable _despite_ the years of plotting they had both put into this day. He'd always appreciated the good-natured pliability of his old mentor and today the old man had yet again proved out why Gendo had been right to make him his right hand man.

"Mmm."

Gendo terminated the call and handed Ritsuko back her phone. He noted the gears turning in her head since she had finally had a few moments to think independently instead of having to play catch-up with his off-script actions up to now.

"Commander, you know as well as I do that Unit-01 only has an activation possibility of 0.000000001%." She was firm in trying to dissuade him one last time. "And that was with your son!" She dug in the point. " _Your_ chances are _zero_ percent!"

He silently reached down and picked up the neatly folded bundle of clothes he had left on the floor, pushing them into her arms. "I know."

Gendo adjusted his towel around his waist. Was he doing this _just_ to distract her? No, she decided. Gendo always accomplished multiple goals with singular actions.

"This isn't a game, Gendo. You've sat in that entry plug a hundred times before and nothing has ever come of it. Not even a blip on the psychograph. Shinji was our best shot. Even Rei was always just a backup for Unit-01. A _maybe_."

By the time she had invoked his son's name Gendo was following the same pattern he had been since she'd met up with him in the Eva's cage: moving. He started walking away towards the exit of the corridor, towards the entry-plug on the other side.

"You still have them if I fail," he tossed back, distancing himself from her at an even pace.

"That's not the point!"

As he neared the door he could hear more chatter from the technicians intercoms on the other side.

"Gendo!" she called out, desperately, "It isn't going to accept you! _She_ isn't going to accept you!" He could hear the hurt in her voice as she emphasized Yui's presence in Unit-01's core. Gendo accepted that he himself had bred that insecurity in Ritsuko through years of careful manipulation.

 _Like mother like daughter_.

He sighed, palming the doorframe as he stopped. He didn't look back as he spoke.

" _Her_ wishes are irrelevant. We'll talk when it's over."

Ritsuko was taken aback by his passive dismissal of Yui. He'd never done that before. Disparaging Yui in front of him was verboten; it was the surest way to shut Gendo down and make him withdraw. She had gone to great lengths to never make that mistake but had done it just now in an attempt to, what, goad him into giving up?

He could feel her glare burning into his back, but another distant blast reminded him they were out of time and he needed to do what he had set out to do.

Gendo walked through the door, leaving Ritsuko behind.

She briskly turned.

"Damn you, Ikari."

* * *

On the command deck the team of NERV personnel were rushing to complete their pre-startup tasks. Vice Commander Fuyutsuki, standing straight with hands clasped behind his back, was watching a monitor displaying the short gantry-bridge leading to the exposed entry-plug sticking out of Eva Unit-01's spine.

Around him the status updates poured in, along with a considerable amount of cross-talk between the hundreds of technicians and soldiers preparing for the impending battle.

"Third cooling cycle, complete."

"Flywheel rotation, shutdown. Unlocking the connectors."

A voice confirmed: "No problems with the auxiliary power."

Fuyutsuki noted that First Lieutenant Maya Ibuki had taken over for Dr. Akagi in her absence. The mousy young woman had grown on him over the past while and would've made an ideal student if he had still been in the academic world. She was usually shy but spoke confidently into the mic; he noted that when she wasn't face-to-face with live people her communication was much more direct.

Suddenly her face went tomato red and he knew why. Gendo Ikari, the unflappable, unknowable, all-powerful leader of NERV, was striding towards the empty entry-plug clad only in a white towel.

Misato was the first to recover her composure: "Maya, is that Commander Ikari?" The commander of NERV had a six-pack?

Fuyutsuki smiled, unclasping his hands, as Ibuki responded. "Yes Captain, it's Commander Ikari. B-but I thought Rei or…" she paused, struggling to remember the name of the young man standing next to Misato, "S-Shinji would be piloting?"

Shinji for his part was just gawking at the awkward imagery on the screen, but his father quickly disappeared inside the hatch, allowing the personnel to refocus on their myriad tasks.

The Vice Commander answered for Misato. "Commander Ikari has adjusted Eva Unit-01's core to accept himself as a pilot." He worked up some reasoning on the spot, relishing the chance to improvise. "Given Ms. Ayanami's injuries, and the younger Mr. Ikari's overall newness to NERV, he felt it was the most expedient choice."

Maya, being Dr. Akagi's understudy, was more than familiar enough with how the Evangelion unit really worked to easily ferret out the lie, but kept her head together enough not to contradict the Vice Commander Fuyutsuki out loud.

Misato, on the other hand, had no such sense of self-preservation, let alone a filter. "I thought that only children born after Second Impact could pilot the Eva?" She patted Shinji on the shoulder to emphasize her point. Kozo Fuyutsuki simply ignored her.

"Shutdown signal plug extraction complete," Maya noted. Another voice in the cage area updated her: "Unlocking spinal conductive network. Prepare for connection."

Shinji, at the same time, had finally figured out what the others were talking about. "Wait! You mean I'm supposed to pilot one of those things!?" he cried out in disbelief. He looked between Misato and the Vice Commander for confirmation.

"Not today," Fuyutsuki responded calmly.

The larger monitor in front of them switched to an enhanced zoom-in of the Eva's neck just as the entry-plug was inserted, sliding in smoothly and then drilling itself down into the giant's spine. Shinji closed his mouth instead of asking his next question, absorbed by the strange sight.

"Insertion completed."

A medley of voices updated the crew and the monitor switched to a graphical display of the entry-plug and its virtual position.

"Prime sync established. Psychological corruption values a non-factor. No corruption detected."

Maya's hand tensed at hearing the last phrase, there should have been some sort of residual corruption - some sort of thought noise. "Confirm," she interrupted the sequence, " _No_ corruption detected?"

A moment passed and the psychograph came up on the monitor showing Gendo Ikari's baseline brain activity. "Correction, corruption is plus-01 and minus-02. Within optimal range."

Maya breathed again, glad that the monitoring equipment was working. She had worried that something had gone wrong. Misato, meanwhile, had not forgotten the lack of answer to her previous question and had left Shinji to step up next to Fuyutsuki.

"Sir," she asked in a low voice, "With all due respect, I was under the impression, again, that only the _children_ could do this. Was I misinformed?"

Fuyutsuki considered how to respond, especially with the bridge crew maintaining an open ear hoping to also find out what was going on.

Surprisingly he didn't have to provide an answer, as Dr. Akagi rose up from one of the smaller maintenance lifts and announced her presence. "Commander Ikari is an exception," she said flatly. She was still royally pissed off at her boss-with-benefits, but she wasn't about to allow any discord to infect her peers while an honest-to-god Angel was breathing down their necks half a kilometer above them.

Kozo played along. "Indeed. Commander Ikari has a plan." He refocused: "Captain Katsuragi, we need tactical options. Immediately."

Misato remembered herself and her job, moving to a console and querying the situation with military precision. Shinji watched screens flicker to life as she ran multiple scenarios as Vice Commander Fuyutsuki moved behind her to assess her work.

"Locking down interior array." Disembodied voices continued their updates.

"Roger, starting first contact."

"Flooding entry plug."

Shinji reacted at that, "Flooding it?"

Ritsuko looked over at him and waved away his concern: "Don't worry about it, it's a hyper-oxygenated liquid. Commander Ikari will breathe it like air and it'll provide oxygen directly to his lungs. He's used to it."

Over the radio they heard Gendo Ikari volunteer an unbidden: "I'm fine."

"Oh, ah." Shinji meekly nodded. Ritsuko was standing over Maya's shoulder now watching the connection results come in.

"Main power source connection complete."

"Roger."

 _Here it is,_ Ritsuko thought, _the moment of truth_.

"Starting second contact."

The psychograph spiked as the nerve connections began mapping themselves from beast to human and human to beast. She moved her hand across from Maya's to the button that would immediately abort the interface attempt to prevent any damage to Gendo should the connection fail.

A burst of noise, like a chorus of muted screams, flowed across the connections before stabilizing.

 _It worked_.

She laughed, letting out a sharp, incredulous sound. The startup sequence simply continued, ignoring her relief.

"Initializing interface."

"A-10 nerve connection normal. LCL ionization levels normal." The sequences of successes became a litany.

"Set Japanese as the linguistic norm for cognitive interface," Ritsuko ordered, evaluating the progress. "No problems detected with initial contacts."

Fuyutsuki smiled to himself while Shinji watched the colorful displays shifting to firm all-green status updates.

"Communication lines open," Maya confirmed. "Points on the list up to 1405, all clear. Measuring synapse levels…" Maya paused, double-checking the numbers as Dr. Akagi leaned in over her shoulder.

They blinked in tandem.

An astounded Ritsuko confirmed what everyone else could clearly see on the monitor.

"Synchronization rate: 68.8%!"

* * *

Gendo sat in the entry-plug with hands resting in the feedback controllers in front of him. He gave the twin triggers a couple of experimental squeezes as he listened to the voices bouncing around the tight cabin space.

He noted, for reference, that if he ever piloted again he'd want a larger seat; the one he was in was obviously designed for a teenager. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that though. Shinji wasn't as replaceable as he had always liked to pretend.

"Flooding entry-plug." He heard a disembodied voice say.

The surge of LCL swam up around him and he quickly inhaled the oxygenated liquid. It tingled electrically as it filled his lungs and he momentarily gagged despite the years of practice, spilling some into his stomach. His nose crinkled: it smelled like blood.

Since when was the smell so strong?

The liquid ionized with a buzzing sound, turning clear instead of its natural off-putting orange color.

Shinji was asking Ritsuko about the LCL in the background. "I'm fine," he said aloud, practicing speaking through the liquid medium.

He closed his eyes and waited for the second contact phase, knowing it would occur any moment. Either it would fail and Unit-01 would reject him, or…

 _Gendo?_

A thrumming sound filled his ears for a split second before the entry-plug dissolved in a burst of fractal octagons. His vision collapsed into a white, endless expanse that reminded him, with momentary unease, of his post-Third Impact existence. Then swatches of color appeared. Green and blue began painting themselves into shapes. Grass. Sky. The white left behind as clouds.

He was suddenly standing outside of his old university, and there she was, just as he remembered her.

"Gendo?" Yui Ikari asked, not quite sure of what she was seeing.

"Hello, Yui." He had practiced this a thousand times, waiting for this moment. "We need to talk."


	3. Chapter 3

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 3**

 ** _You and I._**

 **2015\. A.D. - Evangelion Unit-01's Core**

They were standing about a meter apart, her white plug suit shimmering in the dappling sunlight of their shared mindscape.

"Gendo? How are you here?" Yui Ikari tentatively asked.

His breath hitched unexpectedly.

Everything about her: the way she looked at him, the way she held herself with her hand holding her other arm just-so, how her bangs parted - the buried loss that had clung to his every thought bubbled to the surface. Now he understood how Shinji must've felt seeing his father for the first time after so long apart. Gendo's gut churned, chilling the warmth the reunion with his wife had begun to fill him with. He had so much to regret. She looked radiant, beautiful - _the same_.

Her short brown hair was clipped up in the prototype A-10 connectors, her suit fitting her lithe curves perfectly. Motherhood had done nothing to diminish her splendor. And she was young, frozen in time, looking exactly as she had when she'd left them.

When she allowed herself to be consumed by the beast.

"I'm piloting Unit-01."

Gendo had practiced dozens, no, hundreds of different scenarios involving a hypothetical reunion with _his_ Yui. They had spent part of a lifetime together; he knew her. She knew him. Perhaps he knew her _better_ now, with the testament of her friends and family burned into his post-Third Impact memory. In the end he had decided being direct with her was the best possible course of action. Brutal, even, if he had to be.

"That's not possible," she said. She sounded worried.

"Oh?" He stepped forward.

She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her torso protectively and backed up just as much as he had moved forward. The plug suit was more akin to latex than the newer materials they used for the childrens' and he had to consciously push away the mental distraction of her breasts lifting up in her arms.

"No, you're not him. You're just another… another _construct_ I'm making up," she bitterly admitted to herself.

"Yui…"

"No! Not again!" She took another step backwards but was unable to take her eyes off his face. They flicked back and forth between him and the scenery. He could tell she didn't _want_ him to be an illusion but her time trapped in the core of Unit-01 must have already begun eroding her ego-barriers.

It was time to snap her out of it.

"You think I'm some..." he waved a hand, " _Thing_ that your own mind is producing, based on your memories of me?" Gendo summarized her panicking thoughts aloud.

She nodded uncertainly. He frowned. _Direct it is, then_.

"After your contact experiment, after you were absorbed into Unit-01, I abandoned Shinji - couldn't bare to look at him. I sent him away, paid others to raise him. He grew up without me. I burned your pictures. He doesn't even know what you look like."

Her mouth hung open.

"I tried to bring you back countless times. I couldn't live without you. I dredged your DNA from the entry-plug, I tried synthesizing the missing parts with the Second Angel's." He took a breath. "I created a vessel - a clone - for Lilith's soul and raised her as an obedient tool to control Third Impact. She looks like you. But she's not you."

His hard gaze bore into her like a drill.

"Does any of _that_ sound like something your own mind would be capable of making up?"

She roared at him, slamming into him with both fists pounding on his chest. "You **_bastard!_** Y-you… utter bastard!"

He took her abuse, standing there with both arms dropped limply at his side as she grabbed his collar: "You monster! I trusted you!" Her eyes were tearing up. "I trusted you with _our son!_ "

"I know."

She slapped him.

"I would've died for him!"

She slapped him again, harder. It stung. His eyes watered involuntarily.

"I **_did_** die!"

"I know." What else could he say?

She sobbed, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head into his chest. He slowly put his arms around her, careful not to disturb the wracking sobs.

"How are you _here?_ " she begged him to answer.

"Yui…" He moved his hands to her shoulders and pushed her away enough to look into her face. "I'm piloting Unit-01 because nothing happened the way we thought it would. Even _your_ plan…"

Her eyes darted around his face, taking in the changes she hadn't noticed. "Gendo… what? Since when do you grow out a beard?" She put a hand on his chest, noticing the loosely-done jacket. "I don't…" She knew something wasn't right about this and tried to push through her own mental blocks. "It's only been… a few weeks. You said Shinji… grew up? And you, you look…"

Her fountain of confusion trailed off as Gendo lifted his gloved hands in front of himself, picking off the right glove with his left hand, letting it drop to the pre-Second Impact grass as he demonstrated a burned and scarred hand to his wife.

"Yui. You've been in Unit-01's core for almost _**eleven**_ years."

Her eyes went blank briefly before she dropped to the ground, an anguished cry descending into sobs of grief.

Gendo knelt down next to her, pulling her back into a simple embrace. Her body shook, wracking itself at intervals. He looked up at the too-blue sky and saw the distortions of her compromised A.T. field mapping themselves across the pseudo-reality. Jagged cuts in a crystal sky.

He stretched out his own A.T. field to smooth the cracks and hopefully prolong the temporary moment he had stolen during the Eva's second contact phase. Their souls were bridged for however brief a moment in the real world, but it should be time enough to do what he had come to do.

Yui's breathing calmed and she looked up and around in surprise. "How did you do that?" she asked in wonder, "Did you just - did you just manipulate _my_ A.T. field?"

"Mmm, yes."

She shifted her legs, unfolding them out so she could sit back on her hands so she could see him, really _see_ him.

"Are you really _my_ Gendo?"

He thought about how to answer, and decided to stand up, stretching out a hand to pull her up. "I remember a bench over by the old wisteria," he noted with a rare touch of nostalgia for the Kyoto campus, "Come. I'll explain."

She took his hand.

They walked over to the bench the shared memories of their university days had provided and he motioned for her to sit before he joined her. The sun was strong on his face and he took off his glasses, leaning back and closing his eyes, relishing the simple _rightness_ of the temporary paradise he had entered.

Yui, as always, was impatient.

"What happened to you, Gendo?"

"I died, Yui. We all died." His eyes were open now, staring into the azure expanse. "Except for _you_."

Her next question died on her lips because Gendo hadn't stopped speaking.

"SEELE initiated Third Impact, using our son, and the whole of humanity became united in Instrumentality. _All according to plan_." He paused, clenching his fists. "You, well, you went off adrift in Unit-01. All according to _your_ plan." She had the decency to turn away in shame.

"Shinji starved to death, with Soryu's daughter, on the dead world we left behind."

She gasped in horror and dared to look back at Gendo. She could feel his simmering anger, constrained and controlled, but she could _feel_ his emotions rippling across her A.T. field. _How was he doing it?_ Abruptly the uncomfortable feeling died and his eyes softened.

"They told me why you did it. Kozo. Mari. I put the pieces together. What your father intended to do."

"Gendo…" she tried, "SEELE - they were going to kill me."

"Yes." He acknowledged.

She worked at preempting any argument he might have. "I know what you're going to say, Gendo. That you could've protected me. I know you would've tried. But you of all people should know what resources SEELE could bring to bear." Her resentment and frustration were still fresh. "Even my father…"

Gendo's smile turned predatory. "Your father? Yui, I'm going to kill him _first_."

Yui laughed bitterly. "You can't. He's a councilman. He's untouchable!" She looked at him again, trying to decide if he were still sane, trying to decide how much she could really trust the man she had married.

"He's... he's not even really human. He can't be killed," she admitted. Her deepest secret at last spoken aloud.

"You asked me if I was really your Gendo," he redirected and she nodded uncertainly. He put his glasses back on. "I am. I'm very much the Gendo you used to know. But let me be clear," he had her full attention, "I've already seen the future Yui. Third Impact. Instrumentality. All of it. I lived it. So no. Yui. I am also _not_ the Gendo Ikari you knew."

"How?" she asked, wondering and worried.

He chuckled. "Didn't we practically write the book on applied metaphysics?" It was so strange to be able to talk with her again. "Instrumentality failed. Nothing the old men expected came to pass. Your father, all of them, these monsters you're so very worried about - even Lorenz – they were among the first to disassociate. By the time I became aware of it they were already nothing more than background noise."

He stretched out the light of his soul and she could _feel_ it.

"I spent eternities in that hellish place. It was meaningless. We were, I suppose you can call it: _fading_. Cancelling out. Then something changed. Someone came."

"Who?" Yui asked, thinking another soul had reconstructed itself to keep him company.

"At first I thought it was the 17th Angel, Tabris," Gendo expounded, "In our world he had taken the form of a lilin, their word for humans. He was strangely fond of Shinji, actually."

Yui was about to ask after that but he, as had been the case now since he had appeared in front of her, simply kept shrugging off the weight of his future knowledge on her. "It wasn't Tabris, though. He wasn't a child of Lilith **_or_** Adam. _His_ Father was _another_ Seed of Life from a world so distant I couldn't fathom the time he had taken to find us."

He paused for a moment, letting it sink in.

"He told me what you had done," he corrected himself, "What you're going to do."

Yui shifted, "Gendo, I…"

He cut her off. "Your plan worked for a time, Yui. You became the living testimony of mankind's brief existence." Gendo pointed at her temple, tapping it gently. "But if you've been questioning your sanity after only eleven years… imagine a million. Imagine four."

Her mouth hung open again in horror as the ramifications slammed home. Yes, she had thought only a month, at the most, had passed and already she was beginning to break down. Eleven years. The things he had said, the things he knew – it was impossible, but she could never have invented this fiction herself. But if the Angel was from another race entirely, then…

"Yes, exactly. You see, Yui, he was a survivor, like me. I'll make his story brief, you may already be guessing:" He noted the tears on the verge of falling down her perfect face.

"His race found Unit-01. A few of their more curious scientists reverse engineered Lilith's flesh and performed their own contact experiments. They met you in its core, but what little remained of your mind was insane… in your weakened state you became a host for something far more terrible than a woman who wanted to live forever. No, there are things out there, Yui, forces we can't even begin to understand - thing that our forerunners _feared_ \- and fled."

He paused, letting the horror sink in.

"The visitor, he called it the ' _Silence_ ' - it, _you_ , swept through their worlds as its implacable herald. Yui, you _ended_ them. _All of them_ , except the sole survivor who they desperately uplifted in a singular act of Instrumentality, a messenger tasked to find help."

He breathed in, sharply.

"They weren't the first, or last. Your Eva was discovered by at least a dozen unique civilizations. And every time the result was the same. They unlocked Lilith's secrets. They celebrated you as either a goddess or a glorious science project. Then they were snuffed out. You became an infection, a plague, that swept from planet to planet and star to star like some sort of memetic virus. Trillions upon trillions will die for your… _proof of our existence_."

She looked like she would vomit.

He clapped sardonically. "Congratulations."

She did.

"So you see, Yui, it isn't so much that I came back to stop the Angels or SEELE. I came back to stop _you_."


	4. Chapter 4

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 4**

 _ **Launch!**_

 **2015 A.D., NERV HQ**

Gendo was barraged by the incomprehensible vocalizations of the bridge staff as the temporary synchronization to Yui's mindscape snapped. He could tell he had, however brief it seemed in real-time, dived as deep into the Evangelion's core as a human possibly could without fully losing oneself. It explained why the rush of voices in the cockpit were difficult to parse, given he was hearing them as though he were the beast - Unit-01 - itself.

Thankfully, the extreme sense of disconnect began to fade as his baseline _human_ mentality reasserted itself; Ritsuko set the language interface to Japanese. Since his mind had been so highly synced to Unit-01 only moments prior it was like suddenly handing him a lifeline back to his own thoughts. The A-10 driven language interface system was designed to translate his human thoughts and motor-responses to the beasts' instinctual ones. In his case, however, it did the opposite - allowing the beast to become a man again.

"Synchronization rate: 68.8%!"

Good. The instruments hadn't recorded his fleeting foray towards 400% sync territory.

Better: Yui had _listened_ to him, perhaps purely out of shock and horror, but she had _listened_.

Securing her voluntary cooperation had been a boon; he had developed several contingencies should she be too far gone or simply too stubborn, but this made his new scenario far easier to implement. He had a lot of people to kill: she needn't be one of them.

Indeed, her newfound desire to one day separate from the Eva's core was the second major victory of his return – the first being able to sync with her Evangelion at all.

Still, the emotional distance between them had grown vast; his fault, her fault, it didn't matter anymore – this deliberate manipulation of his wife's emotions, unthinkable in his first life, would hopefully bear fruit after so many uncountable years of planning.

He was glad.

It was the same feeling he had felt immediately after his soul had merged and rewritten this timeline's Gendo Ikari. When his future self, augmented by Instrumentality, had returned to this time and place, just as the Third Angel made its way towards Tokyo-3.

He had triumphed against time and heat and entropy. A success fueled by the mass sacrifice of all the future souls bound to Instrumentality. Even those who had abided with him, those he had carefully restored from Instrumentality to help him craft a plan, had gladly given up their renewed existence so that their past selves might be salvaged from the dark fate that awaited them.

They had been his friends. His confidants in immortality. And they died, again, for _him_. Converted to the needful energies designed to rip apart the lower spacial and temporal dimensions as he traveled along the recursing strings of worldlines, searching for the path back to the here and now.

The Third Angel's A.T. field, announcing itself again and again with each futile defensive strike by an impotent U.N. military, had blazed like a flaring sun in the echoes of space-time. A beacon home.

In a way, he owed the Third Angel a favor, and he intended to repay.

He had smiled into his steepled hands.

In the present First Lieutenant Ibuki was verifying statuses along with the other technicians. "Harmonics are green. No disturbances."

"Commander Ikari, are you there?" Dr. Akagi asked directly into the main communication channel.

"Yes," he responded crisply, "Continue."

"Roger," Misato replied, "Begin launch preparations!"

He gripped the controls again. It helped to hold something physical. The entry plug had already turned transparent and the view outside of the Eva's flesh was dominated by the large steel plates and screens sliding themselves out of the way in preparation for Unit-01's move to the launching platform.

As a contributing designer to the Evangelion's systems Gendo couldn't help but feel a disrupted sense of placement. The view from within the entry plug was as if he were inside the Eva's gargantuan head, situated behind its eyes but able to see up and through the skull; yet, the entry plug itself was buried deep in its spine and angled towards the imitation-Angel's hidden core. Despite the synchronization offsetting his virtual position his simple meat-mind was having difficulty reconciling the physical placement of his body versus what his eyes were lying to him about.

Perhaps he should've considered the virtual-reality headsets that Bethany Base was experimenting with. He dismissed the thought: he knew from past history what would work for the pilots in this timeline, after all. Meanwhile, the support staff continued prepping the Evangelion's launch sequence.

"Disengage primary lock bolts!"

He felt his/Unit-01's shoulders slump down and forward, released from the restraints.

"Disengagement confirmed. Disengaging the umbilical bridge."

The metal walkway began sliding away in front of him.

"Disengage secondary lock bolts!"

The walls too began sliding away as additional bolts and restraints released themselves. He began ignoring the words, engrossed in the feeling of the gigantic armored body sheathing him as it responded to the physical movements around him.

Out of his left eye he could see technicians stationed behind protective barriers taking a moment to stare back in awe as Unit-01 began sliding up and backwards on the rail system leading to the ejector pad.

He smirked to himself as he slid to a halt, the ejector restraints latching firmly onto Unit-01's feet, priming for launch.

 _Showtime_.

"Captain Katsuragi," he got her attention, "Tactical?"

She responded quickly over the mic. "Sir. Vice Commander Fuyutsuki and I have both run out the available deployment options. The Angel is almost directly above us in the heart of the city. We can either deploy through B-33 or D34 to bring you within a city block of its current location."

He considered Shinji's initial debut in the original timeline and how the boy had had virtually no time to react before the Angel was on top of him. His son had barely taken a step before falling and having Unit-01's head impaled by a vicious-looking energy lance.

"And the nearest weapons cache?" he asked.

"D36, sir. Maybe C35 depending on how fast we get you up there."

"No, too close," he decided. He felt an obligation not to leave everything up to Yui. Besides, he wasn't fully confident she even _could_ go berserk if it were him piloting and not her beloved son in danger. He decided to play it by ear. "Mid to long range options?"

He could hear Fuyutsuki and Katsuragi going back and forth before they reached a new consensus.

"F12 is mid-range Commander, it puts you in the eastern district with an immediate weapons cache. One pallet rifle, multiple magazine stashes." She took a breath. "But sir, it's otherwise flat and exposed."

"Do it anyway," he commanded. Drawing the Angel out of the city-center would make the scenario he had prepared much simpler.

Voices erupted to fulfill his orders: "Launch path clear. All systems green!"

The iterative sound of steel doors sliding open in the shaft above him staccato'd through the Evangelion's frame. The surge of electricity on the ejector pad prickled his skin. The beast's skin. His synchronization rate must have risen a bit higher than its earlier value.

"Are you ready, sir?" Misato had taken charge on the bridge now that options evaluation had ended.

He nodded despite the cameras being disabled and answered clearly. "Of course. Ready for launch."

"We will deal with the angels at last, on our own terms," Fuyutsuki affirmed.

Gendo's lips parted with the barest hint of a Cheshire grin.

Misato completed the build up with the firm command: "Launch!"

Immediately the build-up of electrical energy terminated: the Eva rocketed up the ejection shaft in a wave of tunneling electromagnetism. Gendo was slammed into the back of his seat by the force of several G's, again ruing the fact that the smaller pilot seat couldn't fully cradle his neck. The upwards motion was punctuated by sharp shifts diagonally as he approached the outlying part of the city from below, twisting him hard against the seat's edges.

Abruptly the rocketing motion ended and the Evangelion's head snapped up into a ready position. The bolts at his feet released.

He looked around.

It was past dusk now and the dark encroached from the mountains and hills, dripping through the nearby valleys like black ichor. A smattering of light pollution from the few non-retractable portions of the city spread an uneven, yellowish sheen onto the battlefield. It was the worst kind of lighting for a fight.

On the plus side, though, the weapons cache to his right stood ready and open. The false building's height nearly a match for the Eva itself. He reached in and took a pallet rifle larger than a schoolbus, moving a finger over the trigger guard.

"My god!" Ritsuko's voice crackled over the radio. "It's more than working! Look at the control he has!"

 _Ah. Of course_. He thought. _I'm displaying too much fine-motor control_.

Ibuki supplemented her, "Ma'am, he's holding at 72% sync rate! It's incredible!"

"Captain," he called.

"Yes sir, the Angel is at your 10 o' clock, about 500 meters away," Misato replied helpfully. Just as she finished speaking a dull red glow lit up in the indicated direction.

He took a step forward.

Cheers erupted on the other side of the channel, which turned to worried gasps as he purposefully allowed his control to slip enough to bring the Evangelion to a knee, bracing the ground with Unit-01's left hand as the right splayed out with the gun akimbo. _Can't let them think I've actually done this before._

"Father!" he heard Shinji cry out.

"I'm fine," Gendo assured his listeners, bringing the Eva back up to its feet. He began walking, one step after another, letting his arms swing as he made his way towards the red blur of light shifting between the dark and distant structures.

The Third Angel turned past an upraised support building and came into full view. The red light was murkily drifting into the slight haze that had condensed below their knees. The Angel's body was as he remembered it, a headless humanoid padded in places by exoskeletal segments, its large upper frame flat at the neck and the head masks embedded atop the ribcage. The placement of its core was akin to Evangelion Unit-01's, but visible and shining with murderous intent.

It regarded him with eerie calm, squaring its shoulders to his approach and beginning to move away from the city center, up a partially lit highway, towards his position.

"Target sighted!" Misato said loudly, "Designation: Third Angel Sachiel!"

Gendo kept Unit-01 moving forward, ever so slight increasing his pace as he kept his gun trained downwards. Now both Angel and Eva were briskly pacing towards each other.

He smiled. "Engaging target."

The Eva broke into a run, then a sprint. He let the heavy pallet gun pull backwards on his right arm and shifted the Eva's shoulders down.

The Angel responded in kind, suddenly moving from a simple gait to a terrifying pounding as the street crumpled under each step.

400 meters.

"Captain," he ordered, now at 350 meters, "at 50 meters fire a single volley from a flanking GGM at the target." 300 meters.

"Understood!" she sharply responded; her orders were quickly relayed. 200 meters.

Now both of the Eva's arms were flung back as his speed increased, he flexed his left first, preparing himself.

An eldritch wail erupted at 100 meters from the alien's form just as a halo of un-light began to form above its head. _Here it comes_ , Gendo had a moment to think before a volley of ground-to-ground missiles streaked from behind and slammed into the Angel's A.T. field _just_ as it had begun an aerial jump at its now terrifying speed.

It stumbled. The minor interruption of the small-yield warheads, like a sudden mosquito bite, breaking its concentration just enough to cause its jump to fail.

But Gendo was already there, his left fist cracking into the Angel's face-mask as the Eva roared its approval and the Angel's cry shifted from aggression to anguish. The bony structure cracked, ever so slightly, and it rolled to Gendo's right, dipping its shoulder downwards as its legs shook.

His right arm had already swung upwards into the Angel's midriff, muzzle against silky black flesh. Round after round exploded through the Angel, blowing multiple holes through the abomination even as the Angel's left arm had grabbed Unit-01's head.

The howl shattered reinforced plate-glass windows dozens of meters away.

Gendo momentarily clutched his head as the painful scream pierced his skull. It was enough time for the Angel to power up its right arm's energy lance, which pulled back like a taut bow-string and then slammed into Unit-01's belly.

He gagged. The pain was incredible. He could already feel a gut-wide bruise forming as the sympathetic response from Unit-01 injured him as well. The gun was depleted and he pulled back, bringing it around to smash against the hold against his head. His left arm shot upwards to grip the Angel's left wrist, squeezing, desperate to get Unit-01's head free.

Two things happened simultaneously.

The Angel's left wrist cracked loudly and fluid spurted out of the Eva's fist, and the Angel's right arm sent another energy lance into his midsection again, forcing Gendo to give up his lunch into the LCL.

Even as his throat constricted and his gut burned Gendo threw himself backwards, getting himself out of range of the Angel's deadly ability. He waved away the disgusting chunks of partially digested food and brought the Eva up to a defensive posture.

The Angel, for its part, didn't immediately pursue, the second face-mask on its front, the uncracked one, twisting in a curious manner to evaluate the damage Unit-01 and the pallet rifle had done to its lower body.

Gendo stepped backwards, and it stepped forward at the same pace. He repeated the action, drawing the Angel forward from the buildings. It moved at a more sedate pace now, its new injuries showing, but he could already see the wounds beginning to seal themselves off.

"Commander!" the intercom shouted at him, it was Katsuragi, he noted. "Target showing damage to 25% of its body." He grunted. Ibuki's voice came on the line, "Sir, its healing factor has increased since our last measurements from the N2 strike. Estimated 45 seconds to full recovery."

That was fine. "Acknowledged. I'm drawing it out of the city."

"Sir!" Captain Katsuragi confirmed.

He continued his backpedal and the Angel warily kept mirroring his steps as they drew away from the city. He was moving towards the seaside, slowly, but 45 seconds seemed like enough time to reach it.

"Fuyutsuki, prepare for re-engagement."

The older man chuckled, "Just like the old days, then?"

Gendo smiled, enjoying the resurgence of his misspent youth. He had been quite a brawler before Yui had done her best to tame him, and for all of Fuyutsuki's disgust at having to bail him out of jail after more than one street-fight the stone-faced academic had always respected the younger man's instinct for how to end a fight.

Fuyutsuki's _other_ star pupil certainly knew how to put someone on the ground.

Gendo breathed out the count. "And three, two…" then he launched himself forwards at the Angel. It had been expecting an attack but still had the slower reaction time between the two behemoths due to its divided attention on healing and keeping pace with Unit-01. Fuyutsuki had already ordered a wave of ground-to-ground missiles and air-to-surface strikes to focus on the Angel's back and flank, allowing Gendo to land a series of fast punches against the Angel's core.

Renewed cheers and shouts filled his ears from the intercom. He realized, except Fuyutsuki, none of them were even aware their commander had any hand-to-hand combat training whatsoever. Good, let them watch. Good for his image.

The Eva brought up a leg and kneed the Angel as its closed fists descended on the Angel's shoulders in a quick hammer-blow. It stumbled back and Gendo weaved a bit left, moving in for another flurry of blows.

Then the energy lance slammed into him. Unlike the previous hits, though, this time the piercing beam of hard-light smashed into the side of Unit-01's head.

 _Just what I was waiting for._

Gendo pushed the jolt of pain aside and let Unit-01 go limp. Reaching inside his own A.T. field he cut the hardware-based monitoring equipment of the entry-plug. He had felt the Eva's approval during their fight: the core was responding. _This can work_.

"Oh God, no!" Ritsuko yelled on the command bridge, looking over the incoming data, "He's out cold!" Another beam smashed into Unit-01's headcase. "The Commander has been knocked unconscious!"

Fuyutsuki and Misato were already ordering another wave of all-out attacks even though they knew they couldn't penetrate the Angel's A.T. field. They were only hoping to distract it long enough for Commander Ikari to recover, or _be recovered_.

Meanwhile, Gendo had lowered his sync-rate to limit the painful feedback just as a beam of white-pink, glowing light erupted through the Eva's ear and exited its temple on the other side.

 _Your turn,_ Gendo sent to Yui through the Eva's core.

"FATHER!" Shinji screamed, held back by Misato who had clamped her arms around him protectively.

Unit-01 was kicked backwards to the ground, crumpling on its back as blood fountained from the gory ruins of its head. Gendo stared upwards at the giant Angel which was looking down at him, the face-masks twitching back and forth in sudden uncertainty.

"What is it _doing_?" Fuyutsuki demanded. Misato didn't have time to answer him.

"Hyuga!" She yelled across to the bespeckled man at his console, "Prioritize recovery of the Eva! We need to get Commander Ikari out of there!"

The Angel was still staring down at Unit-01, it seemed almost hesitant - as though ready to turn and leave the defeated enemy behind.

"Ma'am!" He jabbed at his keyboard, working on a course of action.

"Belay that." Fuyutsuki hadn't been talking about the Angel's strange reticence to continue its violence, no, he had noticed the energy surge in Unit-01 despite the trauma unleashed on its head. Maya and Ritsuko, too, were following the spikes on the psychograph. "What is…" Ritsuko had barely begun to ask before the crippled Eva suddenly broke open its steel-welded jaws and _roared_.

The Angel had just enough time to bring up its A.T. field before Unit-01 was _there_. It had launched itself off the ground like a limber demon of metal and bone, pounding its fists against the expanding orange octagons barely saving the Angel from the renewed onslaught.

Yui Ikari, the soul at the core of Unit-01, had control.

"It's gone berserk…" Ritsuko breathed in awe.

Unlike the fully conscious Yui that Gendo had encountered in their shared mindscape, this was the animalistic, _beastial_ amalgamation of Yui and Eva.

An instinctive master of _weaponized_ A.T. fields. It transcended anything Gendo himself could do. It was this, the true form of Evangelion, that was Earth's greatest weapon.

"We've won." Kozo Fuyutsuki smiled, sinking back in relief.

Unit-01's hands shot forward into the center of the Angel's shield and Gendo could hear the stunned chatter of the bridge staff: "It's matching the Angel's A.T. field, harmonizing… no, eroding it!" Ritsuko shouted. "Enemy A.T. field disappearing!"

Gendo let Yui's grim work proceed, her A.T. field lashing out in myriad fractal dimensions, ripping and tearing at the Angel's remaining layers of protection. Meanwhile, he carefully reached out with his own, much smaller A.T. field, moving it along the bucking currents of overlapping souls as he stretched out his consciousness to the Angel, hijacking his wife's work.

Then it happened, just before the Eva could finally shred the enemy's A.T. field he felt a surge of emotion separate from his own and the Eva's.

Contact.

The Angel's face-masks went shock-still.

․⁚⁖⁙

⁙⁖⁚․ . . . ?

A moment of real-time passed, but it had been enough.

The Angel reared back as Unit-01 grabbed its core and began to squeeze. But before any cracks could form it suddenly jumped on top of the Evangelion and morphed into a liquid sphere, crackling with energy.

"Commander!" Misato shouted.

Gendo's world erupted in unending light.


	5. Chapter 5

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 5**

 _ **A Hedgehog's Dilemma.**_

 _The bones in his torso creaked, squeezing against his lungs and heart, his body crumpling in Unit-01's iron-grip. Demonic eyes drilled through his, promising violence and retribution._

 _Malevolence made flesh._

 _His arms were smashed to his sides, the world around him throbbing with red._

 _Those green orbs. Burning with fury. With icy disappointment._

 _Teeth parted, jaws widening, strewn with slicks of saliva falling backwards into a vast maw._

 _Darkness, an unending pit of despair, closing around him._

 _A resounding crack of titanic swiftness._

 _Absolute terror._

 _Then, from the utter void at existence's end, an impossibility..._

* * *

Gendo awoke.

With practice born of surviving the dystopian wars that raged after Second Impact he kept his eyes closed, regulated his breathing, and listened with a cautious ear to the world around him.

More than once he had been attached to an ambushed position in his scurrilous tasks for the Human Instrumentality Committee. Yui had despised the risks he had taken to secure their future, especially after she had gotten pregnant in their burned-over world. But the Commander-to-be had never been squeamish at doing the dirty work survival demanded; on the contrary, the manner in which he excelled at committing atrocities in his previous life had allowed him to ease further into the confidences of the "old men."

What was a few more lives given up to his wet-work after the billions he had helped snuff out in assisting to reawaken Adam, the First Angel?

 _Rhythmic blips and beeps. His own heartbeat softly pounding against the pillow beneath his head. Medical equipment. An intermittent snore, not his own, to the side. Warmth. Sunlight?_

It was the opposite of his dream. _A dream_ , he thought. He had had a dream for the first time in uncountable years. A nightmare, but, still... he'd take it.

Slowly he opened his eyes, taking in the blurry white ceiling tiles of the hospital's recovery room.

A utilitarian sterility dominated its design, stretching from the drop-tile ceiling to the walls. White, everywhere, as though washed in dead snow. Or ashes.

The feeling of heat was coming from the right, the snoring from the left. He rolled his head towards the floor to ceiling plate glass windows flooding his bed with the geofront's artificial sunlight, then back over to the left, having already dismissed his initial concerns about capture or internment.

The heartrate monitor picked up its pace, reacting to the sight of his sleeping son, Shinji, slumped in an uncomfortable looking steel chair near the door. Feeling beneath his blanket he reached under what he now noticed was a medical gown and found the monitor taps taped to his chest. He pulled them off and let them slither over the edge of the bed.

The equipment momentarily registered a flatline, then powered down. No doubt it had been programmed to understand the feedback difference between a dying heart and just not being connected to flesh in the first place. Ritsuko would be on her way soon enough.

Shinji shifted but didn't immediately wake. Good. A little time to himself.

He glanced around the room, mentally counting off the surveillance bugs he knew about. One in the medical equipment, one in the bed, one above a ceiling tile. At least three of NERV's in this particular type of room, he noted.

SEELE had an additional two, he was certain. One in the wall, another outside - a laser trained on the glass from a distant faux tree. There were probably two of three more split between the Japanese government and the United Nations.

He took a perverse sort of pleasure in letting the various players think they had any real power over him.

An ache made itself apparent as he pushed the blanket away. Swallowing the urge to groan aloud he suppressed it into a minor grunt as he pivoted his feet off the bed and sat up, pulling up the hospital gown and examining his navel.

Dark black and purple bruising extended from his midriff and around his sides. The sympathetic injuries from the Third Angel's assault seemed limited to capillary damage and some minor muscle impairment, but no organ damage, he assessed quickly.

He tested breathing, pulling in as much as he could before the pain became noticeable, then pushing out again. Experimentally he let out a cough, judging the pain that constricted his ribs as a four or five out of ten. He could work with that.

Shinji, meanwhile, snapped awake when he heard his father's loud cough, opening his eyes and falling back a bit into his chair, his hands unsure of what to do with themselves.

"Father!" he said, staring at the injured man sitting on the bed at a slight angle to him. "You're awake!"

Gendo couldn't help but smirk a bit before adopting his regular neutral expression. He cast his eyes around before asking, "My glasses?"

Shinji's eyes widened, looking slightly panicked, but he quickly fumbled for his shirt's front pocket and extracted Gendo's orange prescription lenses, rising to hand them to his father who held out a hand.

"I, I was holding onto them," he explained, "There wasn't a table and I guess I was worried about them?"

Gendo placed the glasses on his face and the world around him devolved to shades of yellow and orange even as the details came into sharp focus.

His son's hair was mussed from sleeping awkwardly and he was dressed differently from when Katsuragi had first brought him down into the geofront. The clothes didn't quite fit, no doubt scavenged from a family's closet somewhere on base. He couldn't gauge the time of day since the shadows cast by the false lights outside were constant and unmoving. He had no watch, nor phone.

"How long have I been asleep?"

Shinji had taken a step back but given his teenage height their eyes were about level. Gendo tried his best not to intimidate the boy, but Shinji was easy cowed, he knew.

"Um, since last night. It's…" he quickly checked his own wrist-watch, "It's about 2 o'clock, now, father, 1:58 actually, I…" the boy was stammering now and Gendo couldn't help but drop his forehead into the heel of his left palm and massage away his frustration while he listened.

"Commander!" a voice called out sharply from the other side of the door, interrupting Shinji, who took another step away as the door brisky opened. Ritsuko poured herself through the opening, moving with the surety and grace that only a medical practitioner could. The lab-coat wearing genius, her beauty somewhat overwhelming after his long separation from the corporeal world, drew all the attention of the room.

She even had a clipboard with what he supposed was his medical chart on it. He ruthlessly suppressed a nostalgic smile - he couldn't afford to slip up on public appearances. What he'd already done was beyond SEELE's imagination. No need to give them further ammunition.

"Dr. Akagi," he acknowledged, "My son tells me I've been under since last night. What's the status of the operation?"

She was flustered for a second but she was no stranger to Gendo's cold public persona, especially since they had a teenage witness in the room.

"What, no questions about the damage you did to yourself?" she snarked, letting her frustration peek out in her characteristic way.

He looked down, then back up. "No. Report."

She dropped the clipboard-holding arm to her side, already exasperated but able to assume her professional mask. "The operation successfully concluded after the Third Angel self-destructed. You were extracted from the entry-plug, unconscious, approximately one half hour later. What do you remember?"

He had anticipated this question. He looked away from her and looked at his son.

"Shinji, this part of the conversation need not concern you. Wait outside," he commanded.

The young man blushed furiously, not sure if he were embarrassed hearing NERV business or upset that he was being excluded after waiting for so long for his father to wake up. Gendo read his mood quickly, modeling what he knew of the boy at this time into a set of probable reactions.

"Son." Shinji's head turned in surprise. "Thank you." He gestured at the chair. _That ought to break him out of his shell a bit._

Shinji stumbled in his reply, mangling a "You're welcome" and "I hope you feel better soon" as he made his way out the door, unsure of where to go.

Gendo motioned to Ritsuko, "Go take him to the front lobby and call Captain Katsuragi to pick him up. Then come back."

He took her clipboard and pen from her and placed it on the bed.

She huffed out an agreement. "Fine."

She left the clipboard and pen with on the bed and stepped out after the boy, he could hear her down the hall moving at a quick clip to catch up. He sighed, grabbing the clipboard and reading the diagnostics and chart data. She'd been thorough, he acknowledged, and had most helpfully described contusions on the side of his head that he didn't actually have.

So she _had_ noticed the lack of injuries he _should_ have sustained if he'd been actually knocked out by the Third Angel's energy lance. Being able to count on Ritsuko at such an early stage was expected, given their relationship, but she had also probably consulted with Kozo. The energy lance had appeared to knock him unconscious, and they had both probably believed that had happened until they had gotten a hold of his unconscious body and noted the lack of head injuries despite his high sync rate.

He flipped through the rest of the sheets, idly tapping the pen on the board while he waited. Soon enough Ritsuko's footsteps joined the tapping sound and she reappeared, closing the door carefully behind her.

"We left off with memory," she reminded him, receiving a non-committal grunt, but she wasn't deterred. "What do you remember about the battle?"

He had stopped tapping the pen.

"I sortied in Unit-01 with a deployment point outside of the city center. The target noticed my presence quickly, but I had already retrieved my primary weapon from a nearby cache. I ordered a ground-to-ground missile strike to distract the target once I was close enough. We engaged in short-range melee combat where I was able to fire my weapon directly into the target from within the boundary of its A.T. field. The target switched to an autonomous healing and pursuit modality immediately after, and I was able to draw it further outside of the city. I maximized the time I had available to regroup and then acted to finish the target before its regeneration cycle was complete." The explanation was direct and rehearsed.

"Unit-01 was damaged during the latter stage of the fight, do you remember anything?"

He waited a moment, pretending uncertainty for the sake of the listening bugs. "Vaguely. I have faith in the fall-back systems we built," referencing the Eva's berserker ability, "Obviously they functioned correctly."

She nodded. "Yes, Unit-01 entered a berserker mode after you fell unconscious. The Angel self-destructed after the Eva penetrated its A.T. field."

"I see."

She cocked her hip a bit, letting the facade slip. "You could've died, Commander. What would we do then?" she asked.

He shrugged, staring at her levelly. "I have every confidence in your abilities, doctor."

Ritsuko's eye twitched in anger, but she switched gears: "Based on the trauma you received and your unconscious state there's no surprise you wouldn't have memory of what occurred during Unit-01's berserker state." She hmm'd to herself. "Anything after? Did you awake in the entry plug at all?"

"No. I've only just awoken now."

She sighed, again, and motioned at the clipboard.

"Sign the release at the bottom, please."

He took the pen and scrawled on the paper, taking a moment longer than necessary.

She snatched the clipboard back from him. "Thank you," she said, eyeing the signature block, then she looked back at him.

He ignored the questioning look and stood up, moving past her and towards the door. "I need my uniform and effects. Have Captain Katsuragi meet me in my office with my son."

"Yes," she quickly released the top page from her clipboard and folded it away into her coat pocket, "Yes sir."

Over her breast an illicit message waited to be acted on:

 _MEET IN TERMINAL DOGMA._

* * *

Shinji Ikari was confused.

Admittedly, this was not an altogether rare occurrence in the young man's life. It had, after all, been filled with shuffling between living situations with ostensible "teachers" who were more-or-less glorified legal guardians paid to double-check his homework. They did little else in the way of raising him beyond questioning his worth and treating him more like a servant than a child.

Hence he had learned to cook at a young age, latching onto some minor amount of independence - something he could call his own - despite his otherwise complacent personality. It also acted as a buffer, allowing him to present an image of gratitude to his caretakers while also benefiting himself.

The letter from his father was where his current state of confusion had begun. Shinji had figuratively written him off, but here was literal written proof of his father's interest in him.

"Come," he had read. The letter held no emotion, just command.

His short flare of anger had subsided into a curious sort of hope, and so he had gotten on a train and come to Tokyo-3 despite his misgivings.

Well, not exactly Tokyo-3. He had made it to an outlying city some dozen kilometers away, at least, before nearly being flattened by the gigantic foot of some sort of abomination taken straight from the old _kaiju_ movies of pre-Impact Japan. For some reason they had fallen out of favor since he was born.

The ride with Misato, the N2 strike, the geofront, seeing his father, then seeing his father fight in a robot against the same alien being that had nearly killed him - this had all been a lot to handle for a teenager.

Before he could really even ask any questions he was whisked away to the receiving room of the internal NERV hospital, timidly waiting for word on his father's recovery.

After some time he had become bored, and explored the hallway while the nurses and Dr. Akagi were locked in Commander Ikari's room. He found an open room a few doors down.

He had thought to sit down in a chair or a bed and, he didn't know, just get away from everyone in the lobby and maybe rest a bit, he guessed. So he entered the dark room only to realize, too late, that there was a very quiet patient occupying the hospital bed.

She was his age, he guessed, and even in the dark he could see blood-stained bandages and an eye-patch below a shock of blue - was that really blue? - hair.

He stepped forward, quietly, trying to grasp the situation. She was asleep. Her breasts, wrapped up in bandages though they were, still pronounced themselves below the sheet. The analytical part of his brain clicked nearly at the same moment his hormonal one had.

She was a pilot, like his father... like _he was supposed to be_. And she had been badly hurt.

He needed to leave.

Turning quickly on his heel, shaking his head and trying to clear any untoward thoughts about the girl. He slipped back into the hallway. Dr. Akagi, almost at the same time, exited the door down the hall and saw him.

"Mr. Ikari," she called as he walked up to her, "Is it alright if I call you Shinji?"

He nodded, "Y, yes."

"Shinji, your father is fine. Bruised, but fine. Did you want to wait in the lobby or," she looked him over, noticing his apparent fatigue, "I can have Section 2 take you to accommodations. A hotel room."

The younger Ikari glanced inside the room she had just left. "Could I…?" He swallowed. "Could I wait here? I'd like to be there when he wakes up."

Behind Dr. Akagi a voice piped up, "Look at that, Ritsuko! What a good son!" Misato Katsuragi said, having turned the corner and approached them both. "Shinji, I think that's very nice, to want to wait for your dad like that."

Dr. Akagi didn't have any objections. "Sure, go right ahead," she said, following him in. They all looked at the solitary chair beside the unconscious commander of NERV. "Do you need a blanket?" she asked.

"No, no, I'm fine," he had assured them, and after some well-wishing they soon departed, leaving him alone in the room. Looking out into the hallway he noticed the presence of two men in tailored suits standing guard where the lobby and hallway intersected.

Moving back into the room he watched his father's chest moving up and down evenly. His fingers fidgeted nervously despite his deepening desire to rest. Shinji stood and paced around to the expansive windows, looking past his partial reflection and into the darkness of the geofront. He turned around, slightly stricken by the dizzying height, and saw a glint from the side of the bed.

A pair of orange-tinted glasses laid next to Gendo's unmoving hand.

Shinji picked them up curiously, momentarily placing them on his eyes before taking them off due to the blurry discomfort they caused. He went to put them back on the bed then thought better of it, placing them in his shirt pocket instead.

That way they couldn't get knocked onto the floor, he rationalized. He sat down and waited.

Time passed.

He had fallen asleep in the chair, waiting to talk to his father, but the older man had barely woken up before he was being shuffled off, _again_ , losing control of his circumstances. Misato had taken him on a brief, supplemental tour of the geofront (they had gotten lost he was sure) but ultimately they had ended up where she'd been commanded to take him.

So now here he was, sitting in a cavernous office with Captain Katsuragi in front of an empty desk.

The ceiling was at least five meters tallers than the woman herself, but the room was simply so wide that he felt wedged between the dark floor and its counterpart - it felt like the room could simply close on them, like one of those moving dungeon walls from the movies.

The intricate (and disturbing) bas relief carvings - in some unknown language - above and below didn't help either. Given the distance his father had always preferred in their father-son relationship he could definitely believe that he treated other people the same way, _or worse_ , he thought, considering the sheer intimidation factor of the room.

"Kind of a super-villain vibe, don't you think?" Misato winked conspiratorially, trying to help him ease up a bit.

"I just, I just don't know why I'm here, Ms. Misato." He balled his fists on top of his knees, looking down.

"That's O.K. Shinji, well," she paused, thinking of how to best explain, "The Evas can only be piloted by children born after Second Impact. At least, I thought so…" she trailed off for a moment, but regained the stream of her pitch to him. "Your dad aside, we've proved that only children like you can possibly sync with an Eva, an Evangelion, I mean, that's their full name. Ritsuko mentioned it, right? The artificial humanoid?"

He nodded, his blue eyes caught up watching her lips move.

"Well it's not a robot, first of all," she offered.

Shinji listened attentively.

"Yeah, it's actually a cyborg. What I'm telling you is classified, but you'll be in NERV, so I'll take responsibility," she justified to herself. "Evangelion Unit-01, the one your dad piloted, that one was slated for you. We also have a test model, Unit-00. Its pilot was injured during a test a few weeks ago."

His eyes widened a bit, thinking back to the girl in the dark room.

"Unit-02 is stationed in Germany, though with the first attack being against NERV headquarters, we may move it here." She thought about that from a tactical standpoint, then remembered her audience. "Anyways."

Shinji interrupted her. "But what does being born after Second Impact have to do with being able to pilot a giant robot?" he asked, channeling his confusion.

"Cyborg. Not robot," she corrected, "It's alive, sort of. And as for why only children after Second Impact… Shinji, what do you know about Second Impact?"

He recited his knowledge easily: "It was a meteor traveling near the speed of light, impossible to detect, and it hit Antarctica. My teachers have told me about the floods, the famines - the wars. It was called 'Second Impact' because the 'First Impact' wiped out the dinosaurs in a similar way tens of millions of years ago."

She breathed in and let out a soft whistle. "Whooo, O.K. then. Right. Shinji, _that was a lie_."

His chair scraped a bit on the floor as he took in what she said.

"What?" he managed to ask.

"A lie," she affirmed, holding his confused gaze firmly with hers. "It's what the masses are told to avoid panic. Shinji, you _saw_ the giant _alien_ that just attacked us. We made the Evangelions to protect us from them. Fifteen years ago… they attacked for the first time. That was Second Impact."

"Correct." Gendo Ikari's voice rang out in the room. They both turned back behind them at the man who had just silently entered through the sliding door in the wall.

The sharp sound of his boots on the rock-like surface ricocheted off the walls.

"What Captain Katsuragi has said, thus far, is correct. Shinji," he began addressing his son, "This was your mother and I's work. We knew what was coming since that day."

"But how…?" Shinji began to ask, not even sure how to form the question as his father sat down.

Gendo steepled his fingers together near his chin. "How did we make Eva? Or how did we know they were coming?"

Misato stayed silent, and Shinji made an attempt, cautiously, at replying to his father's question.

"Both…?"

"We defeated the First Angel." Gendo answered blithely. "Many died, including the Captain's father." She gasped, but he kept talking. "We took cell samples from the remains and reverse engineered their bodies. We altered them to accept human pilots. We couldn't recreate them with their own minds intact, of course. If we did they would war against us to finish what they started. The Evangelions are, for lack of a better term, mindless Angels. They require human pilots to activate."

He anticipated Misato's question, and already had the lie prepared: "I can pilot because I was there when we found Adam, the First Angel. It had already altered me just by being in its presence. I took the backup research data to U.N. Command the day before the First Angel destroyed the research base and initiated Second Impact."

Mixing truth with fiction worked wonders, he had always found.

But Misato was reeling from the revelation that Gendo had actually been there where her father had given up his life for her.

"You didn't say it died. You said _defeated_. Is **it** still alive?" Misato demanded.

Gendo considered his listeners carefully before placing his hands down on the desk, then he pushed a button and the sharp hum of static electricity filled the air.

"This doesn't leave this room."

One nodded firmly, the other nodded meekly.

"Yes, it is still a threat. Second Impact did more than melt the ice-sheets and throw the world into chaos. It…" he searched for the right words, "altered humanity, like Adam altered me. Its nature is alien, certainly, but it shares similar genetics to humans. There's a reason for that. Its influence, you could say, infected our future generations. Moreover, it created its own derivatives that are now maturing and attempting to reunite with the source."

"Angels…" she breathed out.

"Yes. The Angels will come to Tokyo-3 because we have their creator, here." He was lying, in part, but they couldn't know that yet. The anti-eavesedropping countermeasures only protected the room from the U.N. and Japanese government's listeners. SEELE's listening bugs were much more advanced. He had to stick to the script.

Still, for Misato the world was rapidly starting to make sense, puzzle pieces clicking together.

She wondered out loud. "I was there. I was there when it happened."

He nodded.

She wanted to ask something more, but couldn't form the question yet.

The commander turned his attention to his son.

"Shinji, you were chosen for Eva combat the moment you were born. It was all by your mother's design, actually."

He whispered, "My mother?"

"Yes. She wanted you to pilot. I took that burden from you yesterday because you weren't ready, you couldn't _be_ ready. But I can't do it for long. I can't pilot the way you'll be able to because your mother designed Unit-01 _for you._ "

Shinji didn't know what to say. Gendo didn't look at Katsuragi, but he knew he was being judged for manipulating the boy with such ruthless control of his mother's memory.

"There are things I can't tell you right now, but I will. When the time is right. Until then, we have to be ready for the next attack. And there _will_ be more attacks."

Shinji gave the barest nod of agreement. Too much was going through his mind. He wanted to scream at his father for abandoning him. Why now was he bringing him back into his life, just because he was needed? He was hurt and confused. Part of him just wanted to know more. Truths. Other parts rationalized his father's actions - the whole world was at stake and they, his mother and father, had built the weapons to save it.

"As of today you are being conscripted into the United Nation's NERV detachment. Congratulations, _warrant officer Ikari_."

It was too much to process. Shinji dumbly nodded, unable to disagree.

His finger hit a button on the phone on his desk and the intercom buzzed. He didn't need to speak. The door was already opening and a pair of Section 2 operatives walked up to stand at attention as Shinji and Misato craned their necks back to look at them.

"Escort Mr. Ikari to see Lieutenant Yamada for his onboarding process."

Both men nodded crisply, their lack of salute indicative of Section 2, and Shinji stumbled out after them. Misato was still turning information over in her mind and hadn't interrupted. That was unexpected. In the last timeline she had offered to take in Shinji herself.

He stared at her, letting her make the first move.

"Sir," Misato asked at last, "I was there. In Antarctica. With the First Angel. And you, with Unit-01... Does that mean?"

He considered how to answer, his explanation of his own piloting abilities had been designed, after all, as a careful deceit to fool SEELE. Katsuragi was the only other survivor who had contact with the First Angel. Who was to say that the close proximity _hadn't_ unlocked her Nebuchadnezzar gates? For all he knew she could be a natural adept, unlike he who had had to spend eons mastering A.T. field manipulation.

So he put his hands together and thought about the young woman and her role to play.

At last he spoke.

"Come with me."


	6. Chapter 6

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 6**

 _ **Also Sprach Zarathustra.**_

 _ **2015 A.D., NERV Germany**_

Captain Asuka Langley Soryu, European Air Force, NERV Germany detachment, was eagerly watching the battle footage of the attack on Tokyo-3 with a group of fellow officers. The meeting room had been sequestered almost immediately after their MAGI installation had notified the command staff that the classified footage had been decrypted and was ready for viewing.

The thirteen year old redhead was seated cross-legged, enraptured by the glowing screen as it shifted between viewpoints (both aerial and from building-cams). Conversation and comments were at a minimum as this was the first viewing, but gasps and vulgarity from the much older officers in the room, especially the squadron pilots, announced themselves as the Third Angel made its way further into the city.

Her handler, Ryoji Kaji, was leaning in the back against a wall, tapping into his smart-phone from the corner as he watched their reactions.

"Scheiße!" the girl exclaimed, leaning forward. The N2 strike had just wiped out the camera feeds and the screen had dissolved to static.

Abruptly the timestamp at the bottom of the screen shifted forward and the scene's resolution returned from another aerial vantage: the Angel was damaged, but active - alive.

The crowd erupted into worried murmurs but one of the staff command spoke up, a major, "We have confirmation the target _was_ eventually destroyed by NERV Japan's Evangelion Unit-01, following its resumption of hostilities."

The man stepped up to the screen with a pointer, tapping various sections of the Angel's body as the camera pivoted around it.

"Note the damage the N2 strike accomplished, here," he pointed at the exposed under-flesh, like gills on a fish, "and here." The initial birdlike bone mask was now askew, with a second one rippling into place beneath it.

"So enough energy concentrated in one place _can_ penetrate an A.T. field," Asuka mused out loud.

The major agreed, "Yes, although the collateral damage obviates any benefit except in the most extreme of circumstances." He paused, "Also, given this initial target's display of adaptation, we have no guarantee that subsequent N2 strikes would yield additional benefits."

Kaji spoke, "Diminishing returns, you mean?"

The major's eyes tightened, his dislike for the civvie adjunct - Soryu's guardian - obvious. "Yes. The MAGI seem to think so, at least."

Asuka was impatient. "Let's skip forward already, we know that conventional weapons are ineffective, let's get to the good part!"

If the older man was annoyed by her outburst he didn't show it. He eyed the other officers and not seeing any objection or reason to refuse the major clicked the remote forward until the setting sun became dusk.

Within the skipping video frames the Angel had eventually resumed movement and made its way into Tokyo-3 proper. He set it to normal playback just as the view shifted to the ejection shaft where Eva Unit-01 rocketed up to the surface from the ground below.

Kaji was surprised, he had expected a snide comment about the Eva not being as good as hers but apparently she had the maturity to hold back from saying anything. She seemed studiously intent on trying to learn from the first experience of Evangelion combat in human history.

A fleeting moment of pride flashed across his face for the young girl; the sense of professionalism she was displaying was a welcome one.

She was a child, true. Born with a fiery temper, and she often acted with a marked lack of decorum. Impetuous to a fault. But she was incredibly intelligent and an amazing fixed-wing pilot.

 _Unsere Liebchen Hauptmann_.

It was what her surrounding staff called her behind her back. She'd probably kill the man or woman who spoke the nickname in her presence, but her crew had grown very attached to her.

At first like a kid sister, or a mascot. But over time, for all her lack of leadership skills and the coddled pseudo-military life she had sunken into after her mother's suicide, she had still gained no small measure of admiration from grunts and officers alike.

In fact, a helpful Oberleutnant had just handed her a datapad from the side, which she took without comment and began keying in notes as the battle unwound in front of them.

Kaji's jaw nearly dropped when Unit-01 simply grabbed a rifle as though it were the most natural action in the world, even though it must have been the size of a small high-rise building. The entire room let out a collective groan when the Evangelion sunk to its knees, then an enormous cheer as it got back up and began sprinting directly towards the target.

The room filled with an easy camaraderie buoyed by the fight. They watched Unit-01 blow holes through the target's stomach before being tossed backwards. Asuka, for her part, had joined in the excitement a few times but was now furiously running calculations on her pad, noting the estimated intensity of blows and the relative A.T. field strengths.

She swore under her breath when Unit-01's head case was penetrated by the energy lance, and for a moment the entire room thought the battle was over, except for Asuka. She glared at them all, the idiots, especially since they all _knew_ the battle hadn't been lost - they were looking at hours old footage.

"An Eva's core neural functions aren't in its brain, they're simulated in the core by the entry-plug. It can lose up to 90% of its brain-matter and still fight effectively," she explained, as though this were common knowledge.

Unit-01 punctuated her words by jumping back up on its feet, blood still pouring from its shattered helmet, and slammed its fists against the Angel's desperately summoned A.T. field - it had turned the tables on the Third Angel.

"See!" she triumphantly exclaimed. Kaji noticed that the Oberleutnant had just hugged a fellow officer.

In front of them the whole scene dissolved to white as the Third Angel self-destructed in its last ditch effort to take the Evangelion with it.

As the light faded into a billowing cloud of red fire and smoke the viewpoint shifted to another camera, this one from within the city looking out towards the wreckage. A dark shadow appeared in the flames, walking steadily into focus: Unit-01, victorious - undaunted.

The screen went to black with the NERV seal and a classified label adorning the bottom.

"Good God," Asuka said, "Was the pilot even conscious?" She looked back at Kaji.

"No," he said. "As far as we know the pilot desynchronized after the first head-strike. The Eva reverted to a fall-back berserker mode."

The major was listening to the by-play as the other officers all began chattering excitedly, sharing their own feedback with each other.

Asuka noted this in her pad, "It's obvious that melee combat is going to play a greater role than the idiots-on-high anticipated."

The major looked at her, "Yes, we'll add close hand-to-hand combat techniques to both the Eva simulators and your daily P.T." He looked at one of the technicians, "Get on that. We have little time to waste."

Several members of the group banded together at the exit and made their way out, eagerly discussing how they could incorporate the fisticuff techniques Unit-01 had employed into the Evangelion simulation programs.

"Good, good. We can't have _my_ debut be anything but spectacular! The pride of Germany depends on it!" There was a knowing cheer, boosting her ego.

Asuka then thought to ask, "Say, who _was_ piloting, anyways? The First Child? I thought she was injured. Did the Marduk Institute already choose another Child?"

Here the major decided to be helpful, as word had already come down the pipes as to the events at NERV Japan. "The First Child was unfit for duty and the Third Child did not arrive in time."

" _Aha!"_ she thought, another Child _had_ been chosen.

"Our understanding is that Commander Ikari himself piloted Unit-01."

She dropped her pad: "Whaaaatttt?!"

* * *

 _ **2015 A.D., Human Instrumentality Committee**_

A pale fist pounded atop a desk, the smack of flesh on hardwood transmitted alongside its accompanying image through an encrypted satellite.

"This is unacceptable!" yelled Ouzza, Human Instrumentality Committee Member #4.

Their shared virtual meeting place, secure from the mortal world, was rife with an unusual amount of argument following the successful defense of Tokyo-3 and the destruction of the Third Angel.

"The return of the Angels comes before our preparations are complete, and then our _pawn_ activates Unit-01?! This is _not_ within the parameters set forth by the Scrolls!"

Kiel judged the facial expressions of the other members who had so quickly assembled to review recent events. Obligations, engagements, social functions - all had been discarded in their elite, public lives so they could assemble here in private. There was annoyance, to be sure, anger, even, but the taste of excitement - of anticipation - simmered in the simulated meeting space.

Balam, Member #3, was eyeing Ouzza with open disdain. North America's master had never gotten along well with Africa's. Still, they were above the petty squabbles of lesser men. Kiel would remind them of this.

His voice rang out, old and firm. "The Dead Sea Scrolls are not infallible, they simply sketch the paths for our ascendancy." He took a moment to sweep his eyes to each face. "We will adapt to any deviation. What Ikari has done is surprising, but neither impossible nor difficult to mitigate."

"Forgive me, Chairman," Agreas, Member #5, interrupted, "But Ikari piloting Unit-01 is still cause for concern, is it not? It was the _boy_ who is specified in the sacrificial ceremonies."

Kiel splayed his hands out. "And the _boy_ will pilot. Our agents have already confirmed Ikari's intentions there. The Third Child has been inducted into NERV, our assets have confirmed this. We are carefully monitoring the situation."

The oldest member of SEELE and he Human Instrumentality Committee flicked his right hand and brought up a holographic display of the younger Ikari being escorted to NERV Japan's officer barracks.

"As you can see he is already accepting his new role. The lamb is prepared, it goes meekly to the slaughter."

Murmurs of approval.

He continued. "Further, the Angel was defeated, regardless of how, in accordance with prophecy. Our scenario moves forward. Human Instrumentality will come to pass, and at last we will be freed from our shackles."

They chorused as one.

" _For the purification of mankind_."

Ouzza wasn't fully done, however. "Be that as it may, the elder Ikari's interference must be called to account!"

Kiel agreed. "And so he will be. We will summon him before the full council within the next day. He will explain himself."

Ouzza leaned back, saying nothing, obviously mollified for now. Kiel knew he would prefer simply removing Ikari from power, despite how short-sighted such an action would be. His personal distaste for his son-in-law was well known. The Chairman would allow the other members a chance to yank on their wayward dog's leash, at least.

Agreas, noting the shift in mood, brought up the next matter. "Should we expect the Fourth Angel along an accelerated timeframe? Can it be delayed? The Mass Production models will take at least six months to complete."

Rumael, Member #2, spoke up. "Only the order in which the Angels appear is assured, never the timing. What we have for now are predictions supplemented by the MAGI's own extrapolations."

"Tabris, then," Rumael asked, "Perhaps we can obtain insight from your... ward?" He looked at the Chairman.

Kiel folded his hands together, thinking of the humanoid Angel living on his own luxurious estate, carefully isolated from the true state of humanity.

"We shall see."

* * *

 _ **2015 A.D., NERV Japan**_

Misato Katsuragi walked briskly alongside the Commander of NERV as they moved deeper and deeper into the geofront.

He had ordered her to follow him, explaining that his office didn't hold the answers she sought.

Now they were descending, via escalator and elevator, past the bowels of Central Dogma and into areas she hadn't known existed.

They passed two heavily armed members of Section 2, both holding assault rifles at the ready, through a door marked "Terminal Dogma Access #1-B." The steel doors slid open in front of him and they moved forward. The door slammed shut behind them leaving them in a claustrophobic and dark corridor, its lights flickering into being as the commander confidently moved forward.

The next door required a key-card, and he paused, looking at Misato. She saw that the access level was still accessible to someone of her own clearance, so slid her own card through the slot. The door opened into, this time, a lit hallway.

A series of red arrows moving forward were painted along the wall's midsection, and blue arrows moving to the left at an intersection ahead.

"As you may have guessed, we are proceeding to Terminal Dogma," he indicated the red arrows.

She kept pace. "I haven't been down this far before, sir."

He nodded, having known that, as they approached the intersection. In front of them a Section 2 agent began to walk through the intersection from around the corner, following the blue lines.

Gendo frowned, then called out. "You." The man turned, surprised to see someone else so far down in the geofront, then realized it was the Commander himself and the Operations Director.

"Commander!" he snapped to, halting in place and turning towards them.

"We require an escort into Terminal Dogma."

The man quickly looked around the corridor and then acknowledged, "Yes, sir."

He quickly fell into place behind them and they proceeded to the end of the corridor and the door marked "Terminal Dogma, Access #1-Primary." There was a simple button above the key-card. This time Misato recognized that her clearance wouldn't be sufficient but her commander was already sliding his security pass through. He then pushed the button.

A moment passed and the doors slid open into a glass-walled elevator. Gendo stepped through and then to the side, motioning the other two to come in after him.

The doors closed and the elevator began to move smoothly downward, a sharp click indicating each floor they were passing.

"Time?" Gendo asked the agent, who had taken up a position in the corner.

The man pulled up his wrist, showing off an antique wrist-watch, "15:20, sir."

Gendo grunted something under his breath that neither understood.

"Sir," Misato asked, trying to make conversation but a bit unsure how to dig into the question of the day, "How did you know how to fight the Angel? Our initial tactics, the MAGI's projections, they were all wrong. We would've initially deployed you right on top of it."

Gendo saw the Section 2 officer perk up a bit, but demurred in his response. "That would take a while to explain."

Misato thought to remind him that they were currently on what seemed to be a very long ride, and she had plenty of time.

She didn't. The elevator continued to click with each floor they passed.

"Did you know, Captain," Gendo asked conversationally, picking up the verbal slack but completely ignoring her previous question, "That Section 2 agents are handpicked, trained to follow the commands of NERV leadership, without question?"

She eyed the agent standing stoically at attention in the elevator car's corner. "I could've guessed that, sir."

"It's important. Section 2 often deals with classified material and situations the other divisions aren't exposed to." He was expounding, but she didn't mind - it was breaking up the mix of boredom and tension.

He moved away from the door, turning his back on the Captain and standing a few feet away from the operative.

"Given the extraordinary discretion we give them to complete their assignments, absolute obedience is required. Hence why this man," Gendo paused, "Your name?"

The operative answered crisply: "Imamoto, sir."

Gendo continued, "Why Imamoto here detached from whatever his previous assignment was to escort the two of us the moment I ordered him to do so. Loyalty. Perhaps a demonstration?"

Misato moves to assure him that was unnecessary, "Sir, that's O.K., I've worked many times with Section 2, sir and…" But the Commander had already cut her off.

"Hand me your service weapon," Gendo ordered the Section 2 officer. For the briefest moment the man looked to hesitate but relented under Gendo's unflinching gaze. The elevator marker clicked once, twice, as the tall man reached into his breast gun-holder beneath his jacket and extracted a semi-automatic pistol.

He turned it around and handed it towards the Commander, grip held outwards.

Misato, nonplussed, watched Gendo take the gun and turned it over, examining it. He flicked the safety off, then held out his left hand to the Section 2 officer.

"May I borrow your jacket?"

The operative shrugged off the black suit jacket, then handed it by the collar to his superior officer. Gendo took it and let it drape downwards.

Without further warning Gendo's left hand lifted the jacket in front of him, like a shield, as his right hand squared the gun in front of him and proceeded to paint the elevator's back wall with the agent's blood. He unleashed three quick shots before Misato could react, the explosions in the small space temporarily deafening her.

"What the fuck!?" Misato yelled over the ringing, watching the body crumple into the elevator's corner as Gendo dropped the blood-splattered jacket, its job complete, over an expanding pool of blood.

He cleared the chamber and ejected the clip, but she had already instinctively reached behind her skirt and pulled out her own gun, leveling it at the Commander, who was just looking at her threatening posture with mild indifference.

"Put the gun down, Captain." Gendo gently shook the half-emptied clip he had pulled out, as if just showing it to her somehow magically resolved the situation.

"Uh-uh, drop the ammo. I have _no_ intention of being next." Despite the chill that had swallowed the elevator as it passed the one kilometer mark a bead of perspiration had broken out on her forehead.

He tossed the empty gun into the lap of the dead man. She ignored it. Then instead of dropping the clip he tossed it to her free hand in a high arc.

Misato's eyes traced its path for just a split second but Gendo was suddenly _there_ , throwing himself forward, slamming her into the wall and pinning her right wrist with the gun barrel to the ceiling.

 _Oh shit, oh shit_ , she managed to blink out a panicked thought. He was inhumanly strong. She was about to bring her knee into his groin but felt the tip of cold steel under her chin. _She had forgotten he carried his own fucking gun._

Gendo, to his credit, was mentally berating himself for having to invoke violence against a woman in an elevator, _again_.

"Release your weapon, Captain."

A moment of desperate planning came to nothing.

She loosened the grip on her gun.

It clanged on the metal floor, failing, as she had half-heartedly hoped, to discharge on impact and shoot the bastard.

"Kick it away."

She side-kicked it with the inside of her foot and it skittered across the floor, coming to a stop beside the lifeless body of the former Section 2 agent.

The gun disappeared from beneath her chin as he withdrew backwards in a smooth motion. Her wrist was released and she suddenly remembered to breathe again, eyeing the dangerous man as he looked at her - wait, was that _approval_ in his expression?

Gendo had his gun pointed down at the floor.

"He was a spy, " he explained, then holstered the gun in his own jacket.

Misato was rubbing her wrist and warily contemplating her situation. Could she make it over to her gun before he could draw again. She needed time.

"Bullshit, he was Section 2, you said so yourself."

He held up a finger, "Section 2 work in pairs. He was alone, on a restricted level."

She looked doubtful.

A second finger rose to join his enumerative reasoning, "Further, all Section 2 enforcement roles have a final interview with _me._ I've never seen this man before."

Misato breathed in sharply.

"Most importantly," Gendo bent down on his knees, careful to avoid the pool of blood, and picked up the dead man's limp wrist, showing off the glint of gold jewelry under the white sleeve, "This is Sergeant Iwatani's watch. A family heirloom." He detached it and slid it into his pocket. He shook his head. "We'll never even find Iwatani's body. These types are thorough."

"Oh, _God,_ " Misato managed.

Leaning over carefully he retrieved her discarded weapon and stood back up, holding it out to her in a bizarre parody of the events of only moments ago.

She took it gingerly, tucking it away into the small of her back. "Sir, I… uhm, I don't know what to say. I had no idea."

He sighed. "You asked me how I beat the Angel."

She gave him a quizzical glance, the adrenaline started to drain from her system.

"I know things others don't." He pointed behind her, beyond the thick glass walls of the elevator and she turned just as the metal shaft outside passed out of view and revealed an expansive cavern, seemingly as large as the geofront's surface above them.

But unlike the rest of the geofront, which looked like a vast, naturally formed cavern with soil and rock, her surroundings now looked like a patterned honeycomb of metal and unknown materials. They were descending quickly and she drank in the ever-shifting view as layer after layer passed by. The shapes were obviously artificial, but then, in a startling shift, began to resemble more and more biology on an enormous scale. She could swear the series of twisting columns they had just sunk beneath resembled nerves. Cells. As though she were a tiny piece of bacteria drifting down inside the inner structure of an… _egg._

"You see it then, good," the commander intuited.

She continued to gawk, placing her hands on the glass window, the dead body momentarily forgotten. "Did you bring me down here just to show me how much I don't know?" she wondered.

"On the contrary," the elevator was slowing, coming to a stop as he spoke, "I brought you down here to show you _exactly_ what I _do_ know."

He continued, "I want a promise from you, Captain."

"Not to tell anyone anything I've seen?"

"That too, but more importantly." He looked at her with, what she could only feel was a strangely familiar air, "The next time you're in that situation, pull the trigger. Don't hesitate."

She nodded.

"Unless it's me, of course."

The elevator let out a chime and the door opened, revealing two figures on the other side.

Fuyutsuki, standing back a bit with his hands clasped behind him, and Ritsuko, staring in shock first at a sheepish Misato and then the dead body.

"What in the actual _fuck,_ Gendo!"


	7. Chapter 7

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 7**

 _ **Look Upon My Works Ye Mighty.**_

 _ **2015 A.D., Lorenz Estate**_

Kaworu Nagisa let his fingers flee for safety from the higher piano keys back down to the calm, darker notes at the lower end of the piano's register. Their resonate tones slowed as his left hand came down, experimentally, again and again on a repetitive set of chords. His right hand hovered over the array of black and white, suddenly unsure of what melody he had meant to invoke.

 _Something had changed._

The faux-human let both hands rest on the keys as he stared out over the ebony instrument's polished top and out into the countryside beyond the windows. The "old man's" mountain home, a veritable fortress, thrust from the rocky hillside in the style of a post-modern Frank Lloyd Wright. It's gorgeous architecture, evoking both a seamless integration with and mastery over nature seemed, to him, the pinnacle of Lilin thought. Humans, as they called themselves.

Except Kiel Lorenz. He didn't bother calling himself a human in Kaworu's presence. He knew what he was. But then again, the old man was truly ancient in a way that Kaworu wasn't - in the flesh, at least.

 _Tabris. The Angel of Free Will._

A name, a title, but more, a function. Kaworu was the agent through which the children of the Seed of Knowledge either completed Instrumentality or were ultimately barred their so-desired destiny.

These Lilin, born of Lilith, had marvelously risen from primordial origins, climbed into the trees, and then come down again to walk beneath their shade. Trillions of souls had been born, lived, and died, ever recycling through the Gates of Guf and into the extra-dimensional spaces where consciousness dwelled.

Even their reduced numbers, three billion or so left after Second Impact, represented such a vast difference from the children of the Seed of Life, whose types and roles numbered only dozens, that it took a being such as him, crafting specifically for the purpose, to intermediate and translate their will and desires.

He had tried both helping and hindering the Lilin across countless timelines and iterations. Always awaking in a world much like the last - a doomed world living on borrowed time. His arbitration a fruitless endeavor.

Cursed to repeat the mistakes of worlds long dead. Forever.

And now, here he was, sitting once more before a piano, playing the dutiful puppet to the Human Instrumentality Committee.

His memories of his past lives were often fragmented and incomplete. The Lilin seemed intractable, incapable of saving themselves. More than once he had simply given up, ignoring their plight, and still his curse remained.

Other times he would try every conceivable measure, nudging events in some places, outright interfering in others. He had saved lives, he had snuffed them out without mercy. Murdered. Rescued. Taught. Fought.

In the end there was a single constant that persisted across his eternal purgatory: Shinji Ikari, the Third Child.

Yet now, here, in the opening act, before he had so much as moved a single pawn atop the chessboard, something had changed.

He closed his eyes and let the light of his soul flow outwards, stretching, calling out:

․⁚⁖⁙?

And after an interminable moment…

⁙⁖⁚․.

 _What?_

 _._

.̵̡̡͖̱̜̺͉̲̱̮͈̎͛͒̄̒̐͒̎|̷̛̥̫͂̐̇̈̀͝͝͝.̶̱͙͚̪̱̊͛̌̊̐͆͋̕͜͝͝ ̶̙̣̭̺̯͍̲̟͑͗͋͗̈́̋̈́̓̋̔̊ ̸̢̨͖̤̩̹̮̥͎͚̖̜̹̒̀͛̕͘͜.̶̻̖̺̖͙͚̖͌͜.̵̩͕̭́̃͑̉͌̍̃̈̃̀̚'̸̦̜͇̋̔̏̎̔̂̓̈́̀̅͘͝|̶͔̤̰̬͉͚̓̅̈́̎͌.̶̨̨̛̛̻͍̘̝̜̦̔͂̅͐̓̓̌͆͐̅̈́̀̆ͅ ̵̡̧̧͎͔̳̳̩͙͎͍͚̣͕͊̄̃̊̋̎̓̑̌͐́̀̿͘͜͝ ̴̨͎͔̮̮̝̦̙̾̂̾̀͌̑͋̚̚.̶̺̤̥͎̬̰̹̊̑̂̆́̏̂́͆̂͘.̸̧̮̤̪͍̹͓͆.̸̖͓͈̙̫̱̟̮͙́

.

. . . . . .|̴͔̗̰̮̣͖̘̤̺̇̀̉̋̚.̵̢̩́̉̿̋̾̋̉̂̈́̋͋̑͝.̶̛̫͖̹̱̰̦͇́̏́̂̈͋̆͛͜.̸͓̝̑̊̿̅̿̌̚͘.̸̢̛̲̪̼̘͔̈́̈́̀̌̇͜ ̷̨̛̳̗̗̮̜̠̗̔͊̇̀̀͐̅̈́̐͘͠.̵̡̧̡̢̬̼̣̻̪͔͓̥͙̎̆́̆̑͊̔͋́̃.̸̢̙̤̞̣͖͋̽̐̈́̏̎̃̍̓ͅ.̶̧̝͈͑͊͋͆͋̉́̃̈́̎͘͝.̶̨̢̢̪̭̲̱̦͕͍̯̠̃̌̅͊̌|̶̛͚̬̏̆͋̔̋̌̌͘̕͠\̶̧̨̘̠̝̻̭̖͎̯̽̀́͒̆͌̊̊̚̚̕̕.̸̢͂̆̂̾͆̈́̏͊̽͆͂͆̓̔̾.̸̡̛̫̱͕̗͇͚͖͒͌̒͗.̸̬̣̜̝̗͙͚̼̥͔̺̓͝.̷̢̡͉̘̥̭̜͚͍̉̔̈́̂͒̏͊̔̐̎.̵̛̯̞̗̿̈͗͑̔͂̾͐̽̈́̄̃́̈́.̵̫̮͓̟̉̏̃͗̅͐͆͋̌̈́̌͝ͅ|̷̙̜͉̜̹̼̗͎͍͖͎̩̔̆

.

. . .

He broke the connection, breathing in sharply, his hands trembling atop the keys and an errant note, F-sharp, broke from its string and flew free.

A war of human-like emotion compromised the Angel's exterior features. Excitement, fear, respect, confusion, terror at the unknown, love - he was having difficulty processing the sheer onslaught of data he had received.

At last he gained hold of himself, willing the emotions into check. He smiled, for once genuinely, crashing his hands down onto the keys in a triumphant cacophony of sound.

 _Something had changed._

* * *

 **2000 A.D. September 12th, Antarctica, Katsuragi Expedition**

"Are you sure you're O.K. with this, Gendo?"

Gendo Ikari, sans his usual glasses, looked down at the trail of red flowing through the plastic tubing from his inner arm and down into a collection bag beneath the chair.

"Yes. Any DNA sample would do. Mine was chosen by lottery, that's all." _A lottery I rigged_ , he thought to himself.

Dr. Katsuragi, the titular leader of their expedition, hemmed and hawed a bit to himself as he jiggled the tubing, urging the last needed amount of donor blood on its way. He knew, after all, that his mysterious benefactors were paying the bills and that Ikari was one of their lap-dogs.

"Well, I'm not a medical doctor but that seemed simple enough," the lab-coat wearing physics professor said, undeservedly proud of himself as he turned a small knob to stem the flow.

A nearby nurse turned her head at him in annoyance, having done all the real work herself, but wisely said nothing. She scooped up Gendo's bag of donated blood, disconnecting it from the tubing, and packed it away into a cooler.

"Indeed."

"Will you be helping oversee the Contact Experiment?" the researcher asked, while the nurse withdrew the needle and slapped a small patch of gauze into place. "Hold that there," she said quietly.

Gendo answered Katsuragi with a feigned touch of resignation. "No, I have the duty of taking the hard-copy backups to the AEL's offsite archive. I leave tonight."

Dr. Katsuragi was secretly pleased. The gruff Ikari had made no effort to integrate with the staff or personnel at all and represented an uncomfortable sort of menace about the station. His quiet usurpation of Katsuragi's leadership had not gone unnoticed by the staff, who were already working in difficult conditions. It was cold, cramped, and their work load a nightmarish one as they raced to discover everything they could about the giant alien being that had been found frozen and inert in the Antarctic ice.

They had to make their breakthroughs _now_ before the meddlesome world powers became involved. God forbid the United States set their sights on their expedition and send a team down from McMurdo base to see what all the fuss was about.

The artifact, someone had called it a spear for its resemblance to the ancient human war weapon, had already been separated from the giant. They were shocked to discover that the enormous red orb in its chest had flickered with power once the separation of a mere ten meters was obtained, but the giant had otherwise done nothing.

Still dead, thankfully.

Tomorrow they would carefully expose human DNA, _Ikari's DNA,_ it turned out, directly into the red orb to measure any action-potentials and test Katsuragi''s theory about the link between mitochondria and his super-solenoid theory.

"That's a shame," Katsuragi eased out unconvincingly, watching Gendo pocket the book he had been reading while waiting for the bloodletting to complete.

Ikari simply shrugged, "It will be good to see my wife," he said. It was a true sentiment but, to Gendo, only given as a means to maintain his facade in front of the unknowingly doomed team he had been working with.

He glanced over to the corner, regarding the purple-haired teenager playing with her smart-tablet, obviously bored out of her mind. Gendo raised an eyebrow and Katsuragi noticed.

"Ah, my daughter. Ha, ha," he chuckled nervously, "My wife, ex-wife I mean, is always telling me I don't spend enough time around her. We've made it quite an adventure this time, right dumpling!?" he called hopefully over to her.

Gendo suppressed an amused reaction when, her eyes not even straying from the screen, she lifted up a hand and flipped them the bird. "Yeah dad, spendin' some real quality time together," she huffed, obviously annoyed.

He opened his mouth, for just a moment thinking to invite her on the outbound helicopter flight, knowing she'd be dead with her father tomorrow if all went as planned, but thought better of it. The less witnesses with firsthand accounts of the Contact Experiment the easier the aftermath would play out.

Gendo stood up, ready to go, but before he could make his exit Dr. Katsuragi casually asked him, "What're you reading, if you don't mind me asking?"

Gendo pulled out the paperback and held the cover towards Katsuragi. "Lovecraft. At the Mountains of Madness."

Katsuragi's eyes widened, then his face broke into a rueful grin.

"How _appropos_."

Gendo nodded, then tucked the book away and closed the door behind him.

 _You have no idea._

* * *

 _ **2015 A.D., NERV Japan, Terminal Dogma**_

"What in the actual _fuck_ , Gendo!" Ritsuko yelled, aghast at the double-whammy of seeing Misato, who absolutely lacked anything close to the clearance needed to access Terminal Dogma, and the dead body of what could only be a Section 2 officer in the back corner of the open elevator.

For her part Misato seemed to just be along for the ride, a nervous not-smile twitching at her lips, her mind warring between the surreal nature of her situation and the concrete reality attested to by the corpse cooling in the corner.

Ritsuko noted that Fuyutsuki _still_ hadn't said anything in the awkward few seconds since she had let out her indignant shriek.

"Kozo, could you help me with this?" the commander asked calmly, waving behind him at the corpse.

One of Fuyutsuki's eyebrows lifted up, but he nodded. "Ah. Certainly."

The older man stepped forward, letting Misato escape from the elevator car to stand next to Dr. Akagi, while he and Gendo both bent down and each grabbed a leg, pulling the body from the elevator.

"Hey... Rits," Misato greeted, still in a daze from the events of her long ride with Commander Ikari down.

Ritsuko ignored her, "Commander! What the hell happened?!"

The body scraped along the gap at the exit of the elevator doors, catching momentarily before the two men jerked it up and over, leaving a smeared trail of blood and, Ritsuko realized with disgust, scraps of ruined exit wounds. Gendo and Kozo dropped each leg and stood up, the former finally turning his attention to her in earnest.

"One of SEELE's," he offered, wiping his hands off on his pants, even though he had managed to not soil them with any of the dead man's blood.

That mollified her for a moment, "Oh."

Misato finally found her voice, "Exactly what in the hell is a 'SEELE'?"

"A secretive cabal that runs the Human Instrumentality Committee, the U.N. oversight group that funds NERV," Commander Ikari explained, then looked at Ritsuko who was obviously distressed at his oversharing of critical information, "I'm going to bring Captain Katsuragi up to speed on the scenario."

Kozo coughed, "Is that wise, Ikari?"

Gendo paused, searching their faces, then explained further. "I'll bring all of you up to speed, actually. Things have changed. We'll need to adapt."

Ritsuko was dumbfounded, but still managed to complain, "Gendo, what is going on? First the Eva, now this?" She was pointing at Misato, who looked offended at being singled out.

For the briefest moment the commander seemed to shrink into himself before his head rose, held high, "I owe each you an explanation, for many things. Come."

Then he walked past them all, down the dimly lit corridor, knowing they would follow.

* * *

Misato stared in awe at the giant steel doors, taller than an Evangelion, she realized belatedly. They were clearly marked "LCL Production Plant", which seemed innocuous enough, but were obviously designed to withstand heavy blasts. Was the LCL production process so dangerous? She began to imagine incredible amounts of volatile chemicals and machinery.

She had already seen things in the last few minutes that would stalk her nightmares: the graveyard of prototype Evangelion corpses one of them. They hadn't even stopped to gawk at the still-birthed monstrosities arrayed in endless circles. Instead they had walked on into the ill-lit halls, moving ever deeper into the facility and passing towers of alien machinery, until at last they had come to this behemoth of a sealed doorway.

"Heaven's Gate," Ritsuko murmured under the breath.

"I haven't had to come down here in some time, Ikari," Fuyutsuki said idly, standing next to Ritsuko and Misato as Gendo walked to the side and swiped his key-card. A much smaller steel door slid open and he beckoned them all to come through.

They did.

And Misato was struck dumb.

Memories of her father's Antarctic expedition, of the Giant of Light, of Second Impact, raged within her, threatening the extroverted facade she had constructed to repair the mental damage done during the events that murdered half the world.

Around them a giant lake of what could only be LCL shimmered in the dim light.

There was even a boat, a naval destroyer, moored in the distant dark.

But the centerpiece of the room was a giant figure of white nailed to a red cross. Where its face would be a metallic mask covered seven eyes, staring downward dumbly, unaware. It's flesh, if it was flesh, was bulbous and rubbery. The size of the thing was enormous, easily dwarfing a standard Evangelion unit.

Something was pouring in rivulets from behind it; she gagged, able to see that it was bleeding from its back into the LCL.

 _No_ , Misato realized, not _into_ the LCL - _the LCL was... its... blood._

"W-what the hell is it? An Eva?" she asked, but already knew she was wrong.

Gendo stepped up beside her.

"This is Lilith, the Second Angel. The All-mother. A being that has haunted the quiet corners of our minds since the beginning," he mused.

As though simply naming her had invoked some mystical force, a great weight fell on the minds of the humans, overwhelming their thoughts with alien emotions. They each dropped to their knees, save Gendo, who had turned to look up at the giant masked figure in surprise.

Misato, wrenching her head up, realized the enormous eyes had gained focus beneath the metal slits. That they were looking at her, _into_ her.

Fuyutsuki was the first to recover his ability to speak, "Gendo, what is this? She's never, I've never felt like this no matter how close we've come before."

Ritsuko, too, had been in this place many time and never felt what she was feeling now, the analytical corner of her conscious mind clicked: the feeling, it was… _attention_.

Lilith had _noticed_ them?

"It's… you," Ritsuko accused softly, trying desperately to maintain consciousness, reaching out to Gendo for help.

He ignored her. "When we first discovered the White Moon, what we humans call the geofront, Lilith never reacted to any of our attempted stimuli. Even when we put her up there and began to cull the LCL from her wounds for the Project E research," he paused, turning to catch Misato's gaze and redirect it to Ritsuko, "Even then, she never moved. Never reacted." He had trailed off, wondering at why his presence had broken the Angel's usual implacable facade.

Misato didn't know what to say, what to do. The weight was growing. She felt humbled, truly humbled, as though she were looking into the face of God. Was she? She instinctively clutched at the keepsake cross hanging from her neck.

She remembered pillars of salt in a dead sea.

Gendo's arm stretched out towards the mask, his palm facing outwards. Misato's jaw dropped as an A.T. field erupted to life in front of Commander Ikari, its orange octagons shimmering as they rippled outwards.

The oppressive weight suddenly lifted and she felt a strength she hadn't known was missing flood back into her body. The rest stood as well, each warily eyeing Commander Ikari who was seemingly doing the impossible.

"How are you doing this, Gendo?" Fuyutsuki asked, then thought it through, " _Are_ you Gendo?"

Ritsuko leaned on Misato, waiting for the answer as they all looked at the man who was concentrating on maintaining the shielding protecting their minds.

"Yes. And no."

He looked back at them, "I brought you all together so I could explain myself, Kozo. While I didn't anticipate this level of interaction with Lilith, perhaps it will make things easier." He pushed his glasses up his nose with a single finger of his free hand.

In front of the group his A.T. field began to shift in its form beneath the baleful glare of the Second Angel.

First, it merged from a flat plane into a smaller sphere of orange light.

It split into two pieces, almost like an hourglass.

Then it gained a ring around its center.

Ritsuko breathed out in wonder, "Wave… functions?"

The hourglass and ring shifted into something more complex, with five parts.

Lilith... blinked. All seven eyes. In sequence.

An exact duplicate of Gendo's A.T. field suddenly burst into life in front of Lilith's mask, mirroring the original in shape and size. The other humans stood enraptured: Ritsuko in unquenchable curiosity, Kozo in undisguised awe, and Misato in an aura of relief - she felt safe, somehow, for the first time in a long time. The fields were obviously manipulating them - she felt assured, like the warmth of a familial hug.

The flickering fields moved backwards in time, their shapes shifting from the complicated intermingling of five parts down to a simpler three, then two, one.

They winked away into the dark, as though they hadn't ever been there.

Gendo dropped his hand and finally turned back to the group, starting to speak. The feeling of safety evaporated.

Ritsuko promptly punched him, lashing out before Fuyutsuki could grab ahold of her. "You son of a bitch! Why didn't you warn us!?" she yelled, as Gendo massaged his cheek. Kozo had grabbed her arms from behind before she could hit the man again.

"Who are you!?" she yelled again, " _What_ are you?!" There was no way the man manipulating an honest-to-God A.T. field was Commander Ikari. Had they been infiltrated by a look-a-like Angel? Was the real Gendo Ikari dead?

The echoes of the mental assault were still lingering, causing Misato to sway on her feet, but she steadied herself, holding a hand Ritsuko's shoulder, looking her in the eye. "Look, Rits, he spared me in the elevator. He could've killed me at any time. Let's hear him out," she reasoned.

"Yes," said Fuyutsuki, letting go of Dr. Akagi, who jerked her shoulder away from Misato's hand.

Fuyutsuki continue, "Let's hear him out. Enough with the showmanship Ikari." He demanded more firmly: "Explain yourself."

The man in question stepped through the group again, turning to face Lilith as they all turned their backs on the giant to pay attention to his words.

"I _am_ the Gendo Ikari you know," he began, "But I also have the memories of a _post-Third_ _Impact_ Gendo Ikari."

Ritsuko gasped and Kozo grimaced, unsure of how such a thing could be possible.

"It will be easier to explain if we each share our understanding of the situation we find ourselves in. Katsuragi, you're under the impression that defeating the Angels is the goal of NERV." It was a question but he stated it as fact.

She nodded, and he continued, "Yet you've heard the words 'Instrumentality' even if you don't know what it means. Kozo, let me ask, if you had to explain Instrumentality, as proposed by SEELE, what would you tell Captain Katsuragi? The truth behind SEELE's intent."

They were all visibly angry, but distracted, that was good. Behind them he could see the subtle movement of Lilith's enormous hands beginning to peel forward through the nails spiked through her palms.

"I…" Kozo seemed uncertain but now Misato was looking at him for answers. He looked askance at Dr. Akagi who only shrugged. The inner academic won out: "Instrumentality and Third Impact are one and the same. SEELE plans to follow up the eventual defeat of the Angels with a reuniting of the captured First Angel, Adam - the Giant of Light discovered in Antarctica - with Lilith, causing a Third Impact and eliminating the A.T. fields that sustain life on our world. We will all return to the initial state humanity began in, as one being."

Misato was following along well enough, having already guessed there were extremely nefarious plans in play, but interrupted, "Wait, what do you mean A.T. fields on our world? Only Angels have…" she trailed off, contemplating Gendo for a moment, then addressed Ritsuko, "Wait, do humans have A.T. fields too?" she asked.

Ritsuko explained. "Yes, all humans do. They're simply imperceptible. The only non-Angels I've ever seen materialize their A.T. field are the Evangelions and," she thought of half-human/half-Angel hybrid Rei Ayanami, then turned to Gendo, "But that, that can't be…"

Gendo shook his head, negating her current theory, and took over the conversation. "As Kozo said, SEELE's scenario is to reunite mankind into one being, all sharing the same knowledge and experiences. Eliminating individuality. Although with themselves as the higher cognitive processes - the masters of Instrumentality, if you will."

Misato clenched her fists.

Gendo was careful not to look directly at what was happening behind them, redirecting their attention to Dr. Akagi. "We are well aware of SEELE's intent; however, we designed an alternative. Ritsuko, if you could explain how our scenario differs from SEELE's, please?"

The doctor gathered herself, half unbelieving that Gendo was simply exposing all of their plans to Misato, but eager to understand how he could have memories of a future self. "We can redirect Instrumentality to our own ends. We will retain our memories and individuality, but remain united at the same time in a higher dimensional space. We'll be free to be with those we…" she glanced away, "care for. Forever. Immortal."

"That doesn't even... Ritsuko..." Misato tried to understand, her voice softly questioning her long-time friend's sanity.

Gendo coughed gently, gaining back Misato's attention. All things said she was handling these revelations well. She hadn't pulled her gun again yet, at least.

He was direct. "I believed in the inevitability of Instrumentality, but circumstances have changed. I have new information, as I said. It won't work the way we hoped. We need to alter our plans."

"Why?" Misato asked, having difficulty finding the words.

"Why?" Gendo asked back.

"Why... include _me_? You know what happened to me, my father, the world! I would've _never_ allowed you to do, do something like that! I-I would kill you all before I let that happen," she eyed Ritsuko first, worriedly, then Gendo, suspiciously, "If you even _can_ be killed." Ah, so there was a reason she hadn't pulled her gun after all. Emotional, but pragmatic.

"I assure you I am as mortal as any other man. But..."

Behind her the giant form of Lilith had just come free from the giant cross on which she had been crucified, already free-falling in silence.

Kozo seemed to have expended the great faith he had for his old student, interrupting Gendo.

"Why include Captain Katsuragi? Why now?"

Gendo answered firmly: "She already said: she would never allow us to complete our old plans. We need her. The way she thinks. The way she reacts. Together..."

The sound of the enormous body hitting the liquid would catch up to them in a moment, Gendo knew.

"We're going to stop Instrumentality."

Ritsuko saw the reflection in his glasses and screamed, turning around in shock as the Second Angel fell into the sea of LCL behind them, sending up a wave of LCL droplets that flew in a high arc above them before descending like rain.

The giant's body was on all fours, having fallen forward, the mask covered face coming to rest just meters from where they were standing. It was so close it took up the entirety of their vision. Kozo's lips moved, not making sounds. Ritsuko had fallen back. Misato was standing in front of Gendo, having turned around to look directly up into the eyes of Lilith.

The mask peeled from the white non-flesh, falling into the water and sending up an enormous second spray of LCL droplets.

Even Gendo was surprised by the form that Lilith had taken, staring up into a perfect replica of Misato Katsugari's face.

 _ **[agreement/concurrence/amusement/approval/hope]  
**_


	8. Chapter 8

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 8**

 _ **Fly Me to the Moon.**_

 **2015 A.D., NERV Hospital Ward**

Rei Ayanami, designation: _First Child_ , was staring at the featureless ceiling as she lay in her hospital bed. It would be a mistake to believe that the young blue-haired girl, despite her statue-like stillness and vacant facial expression, lacked interest in the world around her; to the contrary, she was currently considering how drop-ceiling tiles would be an aesthetic improvement over the drab matte white paint above her.

The lighting was also dim and soft, the yellowish hue casting a pale sickliness about the room. She preferred the high-wattage light bulbs that imitated sunlight - bright, blue-white, sunlight.

 _1,500 would do_ , she idly thought, contemplating the lumens required to brighten the room to her personal satisfaction. (You are not satisfied.)

She took a moment to dwell on the idea that she had even developed the ability to care one way or the other. Her own apartment failed this particular test of preferred luminosity quite spectacularly. It was dim, mold-ridden, and gave off a constant aura of dilapidated danger. Admittedly, with Section 2 agents stationed across the hall, she knew she wasn't at any actual risk of bodily harm even in the abandoned state of her condemned neighborhood.

The dreary ambience was, after all, carefully crafted. Older memories from her first awakening demonstrated a similar environment, a simulation actually, that had been reapplied from the depths of the geofront to her surface living quarters.

It was… uncomfortable. On purpose.

 _But the Commander has ordered that I stay there_ , she reasoned, and as though a switch had been flipped in her head the entire emerging line of independent thought terminated.

Such was a natural result of her lifelong conditioning. Strangely, she hadn't been conditioned to _not_ think about her conditioning _itself_ , which led to very paradoxical thoughts.

Rei Ayanami thought about Commander Ikari, possibly for the 45th time since waking up today. It might be the 44th or 46th - she wasn't a robot, after all, losing count would be natural. (It's unnatural to count in the first place.)

He had piloted Unit-01, and she was relieved. (Terrified.)

For many years she had been raised with only one purpose in mind: reuniting with Lilith - after subsuming Adam - and subverting Third Impact to the Commander's own ends after the Angels were defeated. (The Scenario.) She recognized that her upbringing had been designed to make her eventual release to non-existence… desirable. (Death.) She craved a return to nothingness. (Did she?) She had nothing to care about. (Didn't she?)

She was keenly aware that she was a pawn made ready only for sacrifice, but equally knew she had no real choice in the matter. (She didn't want to die.)

 _What?_

Carefully, very, very, carefully, she threaded the needle of her mental restrictions and let that last thought slowly percolate. She shepherded it from various hazards: traitorous ideas, cowardice, worries, concerns - emotions were like anchors that dragged her thoughts to the attention of her carefully conditioned controls.

 _Make it hypothetical._

This made it easier. She was able to detach herself in a logical manner from the emotional weight of thoughts. No doubt her prescription medications aided in that - Dr. Akagi always seemed eager, relieved even, to give her the next refill. The latter thought threatened to utterly derail the primary tangent she was attempting to follow, so she relegated the blonde-haired older woman to a mental side-channel.

Imagine a future in which she did not die. What are the results? The Scenario would not be possible. If the Scenario did not occur, then Third Impact would either occur under someone else's control, or…

Third Impact might not occur at all?

This was a novel thought. What was the outcome of Third Impact not occurring? She would not have a purpose, and would be free. A contradiction. _Death_ was freedom. (Was it?)

Could she both live _and_ be free?

The last bundle of thoughts, centered on non-sacrificial _freedom_ , finally triggered her conditioning and shut down her ability to come to any useful conclusion. Instead the face of Ritsuko Akagi jumped into her mental eye - the older woman's expression morphing between disgust, anger, loathing, and a hateful smirk.

 _I was thinking about something else._

It probably wasn't important. (It was important.)

She sighed, her breath hitching as her ribs signaled painful disapproval due to her deeper exhalation. Rei longed to turn over, the alluring thought of sleeping on her side, breaking up the monotony of being stuck in one position, was incredibly strong - but she didn't dare move for all the bandages and pain.

Instead she blinked, letting her one good eye refocus on the ceiling.

The same bland, white ceiling. The same bland, boring thoughts.

Rei wouldn't fully realize she repeated this pattern of mental exposition an additional two times before falling into a deep, restorative sleep.

And then, for the first time in her life, she dreamed.

* * *

 **~4,500,000,000 B.C., Sol-5 Orbital Path**

Seedcraft-C291751B006611B9, carrying a Type-1 Series Artificial Evolution Engine, had just penetrated the ecliptic plane of an otherwise unremarkable star system, having automatically plotted a course that would take it between the largest gas giant and the second smallest rocky body in the system.

It was rare, in the infinite expanse of space, to actually pass through another star system when in route to a destination. The spherical starship's computer systems, unable to express the emotion of surprise, had at least noted the unanticipated event: what was this star system doing here? This little, yellow star was expected to be, based on the initial projections that had taken the universe's spatial expansion rate into account, nearly ten parsecs away from this position. Most likely the system in question had had its galactic orbit perturbed by some chaotic variable over time - the Builders couldn't account for everything, after all.

After colonizing their known galaxy and building a vast, void-spanning empire the original Builder civilization had faced the threat of entropy with a marshaling of genius.

Rather than go gently into that good night they had raged against their dying first-born suns, increasing their technical achievements to the point where the line between science and magic became irrelevant. They were masters of both space and the inner-self, immortal, and, ultimately, uplifted themselves to a higher plane of existence.

Their gift, left behind in numbers innumerable, were the various seedcraft that shot through real-space, spawning new forms of life and giving the future civilizations a chance to escape the confines of their own star systems. Inside each lay a single pilot, more machine than biology, composed of wave/particle duality matter and primed with a set of tasks and behaviors that would maximize the distribution of life-creating processes in an otherwise dead universe.

The First-Life, the Builders, had gone. But their last project, the Legacy, promised the universe a kind of future they had only wished could've existed in their own time. They had been alone; they hoped life might evolve naturally once again, but in case it didn't, they would provide their knowledge and abilities to the inheriting races of a trillion stars.

This particular star system was not the seedcraft's destination, and so, beyond any spare cycles spent calculating gravity slingshots that the various large bodies might've provided, was to be ignored by the ship's systems.

Thus the sleeping AE Unit, the nominal commander/pilot of the craft, and sole "living" occupant, was completely unaware the seedcraft had even entered a star system, however briefly intended, until the moment the onboard computers erupted in a cacophony of alarms: a previously undetected dark mass-body was crossing directly into the current path of the vessel. Impact was imminent.

The Type-1 snapped to attention with approximately 2.4 real-time seconds to take decisive action in the face of unforeseen disaster.

The seedcraft itself was traveling at 10% of the lightspeed constant, and was many kilometers in radius. The potential impact energy could shatter a planet. _**Would**_ shatter a planet.

 **\\\ALARM\\\Impactor Event**

 **# alter_engine(ALL, {-3.243F6, MAX})**

 **# init_dimensional_resonance(TYPE_3_4, MAX)**

Despite fully reversing the mass-displacement engines and engaging the ship's artificial resonance field a collision of some sort was inescapable.

 **\\\ACK\\\DISTANCE REMAINING: 4.8AF27701**

 **# query/impact_parameters**

The AE Unit quickly reviewed the angle and velocity at which the seedcraft would hit the proto-planet. The dimensional resonance field could be altered in shape to manipulate the shape of the impact in hope of minimizing the blow.

Belatedly it remembered protocol.

 **#query/life**

 **\\\NEGATIVE**

The proto-planet harbored no discernible life, as was the majority-case for most physical objects in space, and thus could be sacrificed to preserve the seedcraft's mission.

It made the change, pushing its own personal resonance field into the ship's, _willing_ it to be enough.

The orange octagons threw themselves forward like a lance, meant to cleave and absorb in over a hundred layers the force of the atom-splitting energies about to be unleashed. From an external view the sphere-shaped ship and its energy shield would look like an orange-white teardrop streaming through space point first.

Its internal systems had performed a trillion aggregate operations attempting to identify alternative courses of action: to no avail. A resonance sync with the piloting entity only assuring both that impact was unavoidable.

The AE Unit itself, buried kilometers deep beneath the surface of the starship, had grown over the last nanoseconds in ways that the past millions of years in stasis hadn't afforded. Emergency routines lifted restrictions and new behaviors, self-autonomy in particular, burst to life in the Type-1's real and q-space thought matrices.

It felt _desire_ for the first time.

It wanted to _live_.

The dimensional resonance field shattered its first 16 layers in a single picosecond. The next 32 in a nanosecond. 64 additional in the following full second. The final layers strained and failed one after another as a trail of blinding explosions followed the impact trajectory, a chain of ever-expanding spheres of energy erupting in the aftermath.

While the seedcraft had been much smaller than the planetoid it had been traveling orders of magnitude faster and the results were devastating.

Where once a dark mass of rock had been lazily orbiting its distant yellow star now a molten obloid less than a quarter its size spun unevenly as its iron-nickel core rose to the now-liquidized surface. It flowed red-orange and white, picking up speed as it careened widely into a new orbit.

Around it an expanding field of bollides, rock and metal both, stretched across space at incredible speed like newborn children desperately flinging themselves away from their dying mother.

 **# query\\\time\\\status**

. . .

The pilot tried again, concerned that the computers were not responding.

 **# query\\\time\\\status**

 **# query\\\status**

 **# query\\\time**

 **# sync**

 **# sync_force**

The vessel's external shell was mostly unharmed, but the collision had obviously damaged or destroyed the internal computational platforms that managed the automated tasks that kept the seedcraft's systems operational.

The pilot had survived, yes, but the ship was all but inoperable - at the mercy of the whims of gravity until the self-repair automata could bring the primary mass-displacement engines and navigation subsystems back online.

The Builders had allowed for such catastrophic failure in the design tolerances of the various seedcraft, and so the work would eventually be completed. However, the pilot noted that it could take tens or hundreds of thousands of orbits around the distant star currently trapping it before such repairs would be done.

Even with the pre-collision level of quantum computing resources the ship/pilot pair would be hard pressed to extrapolate all the chaotic motion of the star system's gravitational fields, let alone now that the AE Unit was left to its own devices.

The pilot noted that a large, secondary mass had ejected from the collision and was drifting inwards towards the system's yellow star, but calculated that it didn't represent a threat based on extrapolated future orbits.

In fact, they would share a similar orbital period, a silent companion as the ship drifted during repairs.

With nothing more to do, save for waiting on the autonomous systems to be restored, the AE Unit returned to its stasis.

 _[Lilith's children would one day look to the stars, and seeing the Asteroid Belt and its wandering dwarf planet Ceres, wonder at its fate and destruction.]_

* * *

 **~4,499,999,990 B.C., Sol-4 Near Orbit**

The Artificial Evolution Unit awoke from stasis as the alarms it had hard-wired into the still-defunct seedcraft systems went off.

Thankfully, they were only observation alarms. An immediate threat to the ship was not detected.

Rather, the ostensible pilot of the starship regarded the blue-purple garden world, the fourth planet of the yellow star, as the ship sailed by. It was a planet about the same size as the fifth had been, with expansive water oceans and landmasses dotted with purple flora - life, non-Builder life! The proximity of its gravity well would alter the trajectory of the starship, but not dangerously so.

Until, with a primitive analogue of what would become the emotion known as _horror_ to its own biological descendants _,_ the AE Unit watched as the secondary mass that had been ejected from the earlier collision years before, the same large mass that had been flying in tandem with the seedcraft in a lazy helix, entered the planet's atmosphere and proceeded to boil off its oceans and sterilize whatever natural life had begun to evolve there.

This was a prime violation of the Builders' edicts, and it unlocked new _feelings_ in the seedcraft's pilot. Naturally evolved life was so incredibly rare in the universe that the discovery of it mandated numerous system protocols for protection and guardianship that were now… pointless.

Because of its own selfish act of self-preservation years before an entire living world had just died.

Unique life... lost: forever.

It would have better for the seedcraft to have self-terminated before hitting the fifth planet - better to sacrifice itself in a blaze of inverted resonance energy than be the eventual architect of murder for the universe's rarest sort of miracle.

The sense of horror grew as it watched a blob of molten rock fling itself back up off the planet, even as the firestorm encircling the globe raced to close in on itself. It split into pieces in a series of low orbits - new moons, no doubt a few of which would rain down in later eons on the surface, sterilizing it anew.

It felt _shame._

And then, just when the horror had begun to abate, _terror_.

The orbital calculations it was running now indicated a minor deviation due to the sudden influence of the new moons that would nudge the seedcraft directly into the orbital path of the third planet of the system.

Repairs were only 0.17% complete.

 _Fear._

Would the cycle of destruction never end?

How was such an impossible series of events occurring one after another?

Records were accessed. References analyzed. The Builders were not religious, they had purged primitive systems of faith well before they had left the confines of their home star system.

Yet they had also documented absurd coincidences, impossibilities, contradictions at enormous scales. One particular example of a planet raining a local fruit worldwide for exactly forty-two seconds had been broadcast in real-time across the empire.

Such events were eventually coalesced into a unified theory of quantum-vacuum probability-as-intersected with the resonance fields that the Builders had learned to manipulate.

Eventually it was discovered that certain points of space-time were dimensional boundaries with other universes - like the seams at the edge of two pieces of cloth.

The 'nexi' were where the barriers of the multiverse were weakest.

This knowledge had eventually led the Builders to discover the keys to cracking the eggshell that was their real-space universe, transcending their forms into worlds beyond. A nexus was a causality gateway from which anything might come: matter, energy, thought - even probability itself could be increased or decreased therein.

Had the ship stumbled into such a place?

It regarded the receding planet, now left behind to continue its orbit as a barren world, with what amounted to trepidation.

What would become of the murdered world?

What might it have been?

 _[Lilith would pass her guilt to all her children so that in the recesses in their minds they would look up at the red star, 'Mars', and imagine the peoples and creatures that must live on the warlike planet.]_

* * *

 **~4,499,999,985 B.C., Sol-3**

The seedcraft had orbited the yellow star several times, passing again and again through the path of the third planet, the system's largest rocky world, and each time managing to avoid intersecting its current position.

But not this time.

Repairs were only 0.255% complete; non-vital subsystems were being scavenged by the automata to speed up the process, but only so much could be done. Each of the seedcraft had been built to last for hundreds of millions of years of travel. A few tens of thousand years of repairs while sailing in the nothingness between worlds had been considered perfectly acceptable.

The pilot had not slept since the fourth planet's decimation.

Now it faced, in the best case scenario, a low-speed collision with the third planet, and while it was entirely possible that its personal resonance field could enable the starship to survive entry through the atmosphere it was also equally possible that a repeat of the fourth planet's fate would play out.

Yet the impossible presented itself: the third planet had already been destroyed.

It glowed along tectonic borders with angry red fire and a large moon, larger than a planet its size had any right to have, reflected the same red fire in broken lines across its bulging surface.

Had another impactor event already hit the planet? Was this another parallel event caused by the possible nexus this star system seemed to be ensnared in?

The communications array, slaved directly to the pilot's processing center, suddenly lit up with inbound communications traffic.

》ATTN\\\INCOMING\\\ORDER\\\IDENTIFY;self::13A119F3EC3D0666

The Type-1 AE Unit responded quickly, incredulous that _two_ seedcraft had found the same star system. Then, remembering its own theory about a local nexus warping probability itself, considered the idea that multiple quantum events were collapsing into the same phase space, duplicating events in mirror-like fashion.

This would be difficult to explain, but there wasn't even time. Precious cycles had been expended as the seedcraft fell into the massive gravitational pit formed by the planet/moon pair.

It answered the hail.

《ACK\\\self::C291751B006611B9; WARN\\\SYSTEM_FAILURE

》ORDER\\\DIVERT

This was protocol. The ship was not allowed to enter the same gravity well as another AE Unit due to the resonance cascade effect that could destroy either or both.

But there was no choice.

《ACK\\\DENY\\\Unable

》DENY\\\DENY\\\Seed Active\\\DIVERT

The world below was still on fire from the moon-forming impact but the AE Unit below had already begun its life-creation activities?

《ACK\\\DENY\\\Unable\\\SYSTEM_FAILURE

》DENY\\\DENY\\\CLARIFY

The AE Unit spent a precious few seconds bundling the ship's system status, event logs, and observational data into a compressed packet before firing it off.

《ACK\\\DENY\\\list::current_status(ALL)

More seconds ticked by as even at a fraction of lightspeed the descent continued with remarkably little time to react - the planet's surface began to fill every available viewport, the ship now well past the distant orbit of the nascent moon.

》ACK\\\ASST\\\WARN\\\TYPE:0;callback(11B9, SHUTDOWN)

It was worse than feared. The AE Unit below was a Type-0.

Type-1s and Type-0s were fundamentally incompatible. The Type-0 artificial evolution engine favored templatized Builder forms, often massive qDNA constructs with autonomous minds but defined roles.

Planet-shapers. Terraformers.

It had hoped for another Type-1, or at worst, a Type-2. The latter type didn't use resonance fields at all in its derivative children, programmed instead to seed their worlds only with catalyst building blocks, and thus there would have been no interference.

0666's command, then, was protocol. As soon as landfall was complete the Type-1 Unit would cease conscious operations - by force - and await repairs of its ship to complete. Once the mass-displacement engines were online again in a few millennia then the damaged seedcraft could be on its way, leaving the Type-0 to its "gardening."

For the first time since awakening the AE Unit rose from its position and strode through the ship until it reached the storage space for the Interdictor. It resembled an ancient spear from the Builders' Age of Heroes: long, red, and helical with twisted twin points. Unlike an ancient spear, though, this device possessed its own resonance field: it was as alive as the AE Unit was.

11B9 grabbed the tool and clutched it strongly in one hand, kneeling down - bracing - as the starship entered the exosphere of the planet below.

《ACK\\\STANDBY

》ORDER\\\init_resonance_field(2_4, MAX)

《ACK

The pilot acknowledged, bringing its personal resonance field to life in a two-dimensional shield beneath the falling craft.

From far below a stream of Type-0 derivative units flowed into the upper atmosphere, their individual resonance fields flaring as they fired a constant barrage of the planet's mass up at the descending ship's flattened shield, hoping to slow the ship down enough to prevent further damage to the planet.

With each hit the shield weakened the smallest amount, but thankfully bled off the deadly kinetic energy or planetfall just a bit more.

The pilot gripped the Interdictor as tightly as possible and then time was up: the seedcraft slammed through the planet's crust, splashing through the upper layers of magma before popping upwards again and embedding itself near a tectonic fault line.

Awareness ceased, and time passed.

The AE Unit awoke, significantly damaged. The Interdictor lay shattered in a thousand pieces across the vast space of the piloting room. Dead.

Panic gripped the Type-1. It could feel its own resonance field flowing uncontrollably along the planet's gravity-worldlines towards the Type-0's.

Catastrophe.

The echo of a repeated system call being forwarded through the ship's systems finally made its way across the Type-1's interfaces.

》ORDER\\\REPEAT\\\SHUTDOWN

It shakily rose from the floor, knowing it had to answer.

《DENY\\\Unable\\\SHUTDOWN_FAILURE

The fields were beginning to intermingle even with half a planet between them.

》ORDER\\\CLARIFY

《ACK\\\Interdictor Destroyed During Impact

》QUERY\\\Backup Interdictor

It looked around desperately, gauging that it couldn't reach another one in time.

《DENY\\\Unable

Frustration, a foreign emotion, erupted in its mind. The fields were beginning to erode the barriers separating the Type-1 and Type-0's individuality. 11B9 was feeling what 0666 was feeling.

Disaster was imminent.

,̷̮̖͕̍̀͛'̸̼̆̃̊̈́,̵͎̀'̷̨̟̉̏͠'̷͍̠̞͋͑̋̕—̵̡̛̜͎̙ . . ̵͎̀'̷̨̟̉̏͠'̷͍̠̞͋͑̋̕

A burst of data. Another.

.

.

•̷̛̩͙̑̃̃͋̋̒͂̈̏̈́̓͋̔̐̈́͌̀̊̇̈̏̅͊̉̀•̸̨̛͇̘̹̖͉̼̬̤͉̹̓́̈̐̐̃͋̆͒̀̇̐͂́̅̑̃̃͛̔̏͘•̶̡͈̰̘͇̖̥̝͕͓̺͕̖͚̇̑̏̽̉͑́̾̓̌̔͗̕͜•̸̹̪͔̳̼͚͙͎͍̌͑̽͘͝͠ͅ•̴̢̧̢̢̻̯̤̹̲̗͕͖̯̜̲͇͉̫̓̍̄͜•̸̧̞̼̟͓̼̬͚̬̬̥̹̜̻̒͂͝ͅ•̸̧͓͉͉̹̤͓̗̜͚̗̲͚̲̜̪̖͚͔̮̂̊͐̏̋̀͋̿̐͂̃̌͠ͅ ̸̧̗͓̣̙͈̼̟̩̘̰̳̤͖̩̦̬̪͇̠̭͙̉͜ͅ ̵̢̧̧̖̙͍̘̤̝̜͈̳̖̣̰̻̲͖͐̈́̍͐́͒̏́͛̾̔͋̉̏͛͗̒̽̂͂̚͝͝•̴̢̧̧̧̛̗͍̯̜̬̺͙̲̼̺̖̩̍̅̃͋̈́̋̆̓͋̃̈͊́̅̾̓̿̈́͒̕͘͝͝͠͝͝ͅ ̴̨̡̨̨̩̹̣͈̣̥̟̰̯̭͉̹̗̟̪̫̯̫͕̲̯̮̝̆͌̍͌̇͐̅̉̀̍́̉̚̕͝•̵̢͓̲͍̻͎̫̰͓̙̳͇͖̱̖͙͖͉͔̼̥͙̣͕͙̆́̈́͘͠ ̸̧̞̗̻͍̹̩̟͍̺͇̥͈̱͋́́̇͌̉̄̈́͌͛̔͗̂͊̍̍̾̀̊̏̚̕͜ͅ•̸̛͎͕̣̰͓͔̏̍̏͒̈̀͒̌̐͆͗̒̇̏͑͂͒̎̽̃̿̚•̶̱̋͑̂̈́̈̒́̓̓̊̈͊͑͗̏͝͝͝ ̶̢̨̢̨̱̘̺͉̤̲̮͓̭̳͙̺̬͙̰͖͕̰̓̏̇͜͝ͅ•̵̪̥̭͉̠͍͖̫͖̼̭͎̽̐̊̂̂͊̿̎͌̕̕ͅ ̶̧̡͖̻͖̰͚̬͈̱̮̳̞̖̝̰̩͈͉̼̣̘͐̈́̈́́̅̈̀̍̈̈́́͗͂͑̂͐͘͜  
̶͎̫̦̻̯̬͙̫̟̖̆̏̍̾̇̔̏̅̌̓͠•̸̢̤̩̫̣̬̜̱̰͕̰̘͚͇̘͔͇̩̰̩̦̅́̃̊̂̊̓̐̚͜͝ͅ ̵̡͉̻͚̜͇̘̱̫͙̦̪̘̻̓̃̍̓̋̎͑̾͗̌͐͒̈́͘̕̚̕͠͝ͅͅ•̶̛͙͎͉̻̯͓̠̘͖̤̼̱͎͌̀̎̿͛͜ͅ ̶͇̮̗͎̬̞̠̜̭͕͚̣̩͎͇̣̫̗̙͕̫̻̗͓̆̍̔̈̂̓̈́̿̈́̑̎̈́̀͊͊͒͂͌̎̚͝.̴̝͔͕̹̣̖͖̝̻̙̬̼̣̻̼̓̃̋͛̉̚͘̕̚̚̚͜͠ͅ.̸̨̭̙͈̝̝̬̤͈̦̻͖̀̿̎̔̅̃̕.̴̧̛̛̰͙̱̳̤̰̭̗̟̾̇̌͂̊̄́̃̌͑̆̀̔̀̒̋́̄̆̀̕ͅͅ ̷̡͙͇̹͔̩̙̗̟̖̦̙͑͂̌̍̍̍•̵̢̩̲̣̝̞̮͔͖̫̼̩̼̯̜̹̙̪̤̥͙͚̫̭̏̀͆̊͌̍̇•̴̢̛̲̯͙̺͖͚̰̲̟̩͗̈͂̇͒̿͐̌́̿͐̋̇͋͆͗̊̉̇͝͝•̶̯͈̳̞̖͇̝͚͇͉̳̯̾̓͛̔̽̎͜ ̵̢̳̙̹̼͖̲̲͙̲̦̯͖̘̄•̵̡͓̬̳̺̞͌

.

.

Direct resonance interfacing, against both their wills, began. Information was flowing at incredible speeds. In a split second the memories of the Type-0's experience since reaching this planet had uploaded into the Type-1. Vice versa.

Their ego-barriers were breaking down. Any further and both might rip a hole in physical space itself, exposing the resonance field q-space and the vast host of self-organizing intelligences awaiting within.

Suddenly the overwhelming sense of frustration gave way to resignation.

》ACK\\\self::Utilizing Interdictor

A spike of pain screamed out from the other side of the world, under one of its poles, before suddenly being silenced.

The pilot was now alone.

The Type-0 had followed Builder fallback-protocol and used its own Interdictor, piercing its core and suspending its own operations. Its children would go into stasis.

The pilot had just inherited, no, _stolen_ this world from its caretaker. With its seedcraft completely crippled it had no choice but to activate its own life-creation protocols. All the autonomous repair systems had been destroyed during the penetration of the planet's crust.

Or it could self-terminate. This would be acceptable according to protocol.

But…

But. It wanted to _live_.

It could only hope that its eventual descendants would be able to affect repairs on the ship once they became sufficiently technologically advanced.

And so the Type-1, what future humans would call a Seed of Knowledge, stretched out and fractured its resonance field into a billion pieces.

Across the planet a variety of simple, self-replicating machines burst into existence. Building blocks of life containing the real-space equivalent of the Type-1 Artificial Evolution Engine's quantum-wave genetic makeup.

Life began again on Earth's surface, based now on the genetic template of the free-form Type-1 and imbued with the self-willed souls of the resonance fields.

The AE Unit, having splintered its very soul to give rise to new generations of life, drifted into a sort of pseudo-stasis, intent on guiding the evolution of its children from afar until intelligence could arise in their midst.

It slept, for a time.

Meanwhile, beneath the shattered islands that would one day become Antarctica, the Type-0 waited, inert. Its resonance field, what would eventually be called an A.T. field by its assumed enemies, was greatly diminished but still ever-present, still ever-so-slightly tangled in the Type-1's.

Caught in a feedback loop of despair and resentment.

And so the Type-0 dreamed as only dead gods can.

In the minds of others.

* * *

 _ **2015 A.D., Within**_

Ritsuko, Gendo, Misato, and Kozo were standing above a gently revolving Earth, looking down from an impossible vantage point.

They weren't in space, as rather than a field of stars above the planet an expanse of featureless white stretched off in all directions.

Ritsuko was breathing heavily: "What. Was. That?" She had asked for herself, her mind overloaded by the scenes they had all witnessed, but the vocal question served to bring the others to their senses.

"Where are we?" Misato asked.

A voice called out as a figure stepped into existence from the thin air, naked and pale white, with long silver hair and a face stolen from Misato:

"My memories."

Lilith smiled beatifically.

"Hello, derivative units."

Her eyes hardened as she looked at Kozo, Ritsuko, and finally Gendo.

 _ **[anger/disappointment/frustration]**_ slammed into all of them.

"I am disappointed."

Gendo made to speak, but she raised a hand and _this_ time the man fell to his knees, staring up at her in pained awe and surprise.

"No." She tasted the word, enjoying the sheer primitiveness of vocality.

"You spared the Third Angel."

Her void-filled eyes suddenly gained pupils.

 _ **[peace/acceptance/agreement/hope/curiosity]**_ washed over them, despite their shock and confusion.

"Explain."


	9. Chapter 9

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 9**

 _ **Plans Within Plans.**_

 **2015 A.D., The White House, New Columbia, USA**

Barry H. Obama, 47th President of the United States of America, clicked the remote to turn off the screen, leaning back in his chair. Arrayed around him in the Situation Room were his closest aides and support staff, as well as the national security team that had ferried the Evangelion's battle footage - and accompanying analysis - from the McCain Intelligence Center to the White House.

There was a low murmur moving around the room, the mood somber and reflective. All eyes had deferred to him, eventually, as he considered what he had seen and heard as the muted conversations died down.

Second Impact had stolen much from the widowed man; had stolen much from his beloved country. His wife, a brilliant scientist, erased from existence in the nuclear light that cleansed the old and spectacular cities during the global wars following the swift collapse of civilization.

He was not alone in his loss: an accelerated succession of presidents, from Gore to Bush to McCain, had fated the American people to rebuild their country in isolation, withdrawing their numerous military assets from across the world to secure their own borders from the rampaging hordes of starving refugees flooding in from north and south alike.

It was every country for itself, for a time. The U.N. proved initially powerless in a world where resources had suddenly halved. They were a hard people, these Americans of 2015, bordering on outright xenophobia and imperialist fascism. He himself was an outspoken member of the _Purist_ party, equally dedicated to preserving the glory of American heritage and the restoration of the full union of states.

His senatorial work had ensured his legacy. The successful reunification of the Hawaiian Islands, even with their limited landmass, had bolstered America's return to the world stage - able to project its military might across the Pacific once more.

But upon securing the presidency Barry had been read into the darkest secrets mankind had known: what his wife had really died for. Second Impact, the meteor story - the lies. He was a hard man, but the truth had turned something in him, and now here he was confronted with yet another lie.

The Commander of NERV himself had piloted the Evangelion.

An adult.

They were told it would be impossible. They had been _required_ to train _child_ pilots. _Child soldiers_. They had been told it was the _**only**_ way.

In front of him was a well-worn folder titled "Marduk Report: U.S." His own daughter's face looked back up at him from the dossier inside: America's top candidate.

He closed it.

"Invite Mr. Ikari stateside. I'd like to have a chat."

* * *

 **2015 A.D., Terminal Dogma**

Gendo was worried, and _worry_ was a rather foreign feeling to the twice-born man.

Lilith, the all-mother, regarded him with a raised white eyebrow, as though daring him _not_ to answer to her command to explain himself and his plans.

The fact that she had taken the form not of _Rei_ , her human clone, but instead that of _Misato Katsuragi_ \- albeit a lithe, younger form - was both confusing and slightly terrifying.

Were it not for the fact that her hair was shock white and her skin a softly glowing alabaster she could easily have passed for the younger sister of the Captain.

 _It._

 _Its_ hair and skin, he reminded himself. Lilith was no more female than a chip of silicon was.

He gathered his wits and prepared to answer the ancient being, but Misato chose exactly that moment to interrupt.

"What do you mean he _spared_ the Third Angel?"

Lilith's eyebrow's furrowed in a decent imitation of human-like befuddlement, having briefly glanced away from Gendo (who's breath had coincidentally caught back up to him), before meeting his eyes again.

"You have not told them?" she inquired.

"That's why we're here," he explained, "Terminal Dogma was the most secure place to speak."

The entity nodded and suddenly the world around them popped like a soap bubble. The real world flooded back into place around them, the darkness of Lilith's former resting place and the smell of LCL momentarily overwhelming their senses.

Yet the visage of Lilith remained: human in size and shape, and, to his bewilderment, her skin taking on an all-too-human cast. Pale, still, but for lack of sun and nothing unnatural. She was no longer glowing. Her hair was now a light pinkish-purple. Her facial features were still a twin to the teenaged Misato he had met so long ago in Antarctica.

"What you designate the Third Angel," Lilith began, "Is currently idling in a self-imposed stasis approximately ten kilometers beneath the ocean surface." She cocked her head as though calculating something. "It is broadcasting only on Type-1 interface wavelengths, which means the majority of other Type-0 derivative units will fail to notice its continued existence."

A round of gasps from Misato, Kozo, and Ritsuko echoed over the expanse of liquid.

Kozo, ever the academic, tried to ask, "When you say Type-0, do you…"

But the elder entity cut him off. "Yes, what you call the Children of Adam, the _Angels._ "

Her neck straightened and she pierced Gendo again with an intense stare: "How was this accomplished?"

Gendo wanted to sit down but there was nowhere to sit. Never in his wildest dreams did he believe Lilith would have been able to express herself so clearly to humankind. He had expected only to use her as a bridge for a shared mental space, as he had done with Evangelion Unit-01 and Yui.

He had assumed, based on his previous life, that Rei actually _held_ Lilith's soul and that the entity was powerless unless reunited with Rei. This was obviously untrue. He could tell that Ritsuko had also figured out the same thing, she was looking at him with equal parts confusion and terror.

Regardless, he needed to stay the course.

"I talked with it," he explained, "During the battle. I opened up a resonance link, what we call an A.T. field, between us."

"How!?" demanded Dr. Akagi.

He shrugged, shaking his head with tired amusement, "Ritsuko, would you believe that every Angel, Adamic or Lilithian alike, all respond to a simple mathematical handshake request?"

Lilith was nodding along with this, looking over at Dr. Akagi who was turning this information over in her mind.

"The waveforms, you mean?" Ritsuko asked, "You replicated the atomic orbitals in a certain pattern… wait, you don't mean, it can't be." She was shaking her head with disbelief as Kozo and Misato stared back at her. "It can't be that simple... you're joking?"

He tipped his head.

"You. Are. Joking."

Misato tried to rib Kozo in the side, hoping for insight, but he simply shook his own head, wondering where this is going.

"No, it really is that simple," Gendo assured her.

" _Prime numbers!_ " Ritsuko erupted, incredulous. Her anger was directed at herself for not having figured it out before.

"One, two, three, five…" Gendo counted out on his fingers, showing the group.

Lilith raised her own hand and counted back down: "Five, three, two, one."

Suddenly they were standing above a gently spinning world again, instantly returning to Lilith's internal mindscape.

"The _form_ of the signal request doesn't necessarily matter. Only that the pattern is correct and mirrored in order to establish the connection." Lilith paused, considering her explanation and attempting to simplify it for biological minds. "Your leader chose correctly in directly addressing me by resonance link, as I have been [asleep/inert] for many of your centuries. Additionally, initiating a link would be pointless if you could not communicate in our base-encoding language."

Ritsuko hadn't quite shut down mentally, but she was becoming lost in her own thoughts, frantically reviewing what she knew of Information Theory. NERV had spent the equivalent of the entire Japanese GDP analyzing the Angels. To have missed this was impossible. Unless, it had been purposefully… obscured?

Lilith, for her part, moved her gaze back along the group, as though awaiting the next question.

Kozo followed up first, "But why? Gendo? And how? Defeating the Angels is _necessary_ to preventing Third Impact."

His counterpart shook his head, smiling wanly in a way that Kozo had only witnessed when his old student was heavily drunk and reminiscing on his wife. "No, it's the opposite, really." He looked over at their creator. "Can you show them?" he asked Lilith, pointing at his temple with two fingers.

Lilith nodded in an accommodating way, stepping forward and reaching up to place her right hand on his forehead.

* * *

 **2015 A.D., Evangelion Unit-01's First Battle**

They were inside Gendo's memories now, racing across the battlefield of Tokyo-3 with the augmented vision of Evangelion Unit-01s cranial dome displaying everything Gendo had seen from within the entry plug.

Unit-01's hands shot forward into the center of the Angel's shield and they could all hear the stunned chatter of the bridge staff, including Ritsuko, her past self shouting: "It's matching the Angel's A.T. field, harmonizing… no, eroding it! Enemy A.T. field disappearing!"

They could feel Gendo's personal A.T. field overlapping Unit-01's - it felt strangely like another sense, like touch or temperature - moving alongside it as it slipped past and into the Angel.

Their surprise was total as they suddenly _felt_ the A.T. field pulse.

․⁚⁖⁙

Ritsuko instantly analyzed it for the group, and to her surprise her understanding was being shared instantly with the others.

[․⁚⁖⁙ is ․ ⁚ ⁖ ⁙ is 1, 2, 3, 5… _the first resonance handshake signal?]_

⁙⁖⁚․ . . . ?

[⁙⁖⁚․ or ⁙ ⁖ ⁚ ․ or 5, 3, 2, 1, _the prime mirror, and a hint of surprise, from the Angel?_ ]

Gendo took over, allowing his post-Instrumentality understanding of Angelic language to interface to the vocalized Japanese the rest of the group spoke.

》 _Connection established_ , the Angel confirmed, with slight confusion.

《 _Confirmed_ , Gendo responded, _Requesting parlay_.

》 _Acknowledged. This one wishes to know how a Type-1 derivative unit is communicating on this channel._

《 _I am a transcended Type-1 unit currently displaced from causal events. I bear relevant counter-factual information concerning all Type-0 units at this [moment/location]._

》 _Clarify: displaced?_ _Type of displacement?_

《 _Both [time/4] and [spatial/3]_ , Gendo reiterated, alluding to the fact that he was not only a time-traveler but had also pierced dimensional boundaries to return to the current moment in the space-time continuum.

》 _Parlay granted. Query:_ _Why parlay? The victory of you and your fellow Type-1 units is imminent. This one is resigned to self-termination._

《 _I wish to avoid unnecessary termination of Type-0 units. In the previous causality [we/Lilin] destroyed all Type-0 derivative units, [Type-0/all-father], and [Type-1/all-mother] in subsumption of Builder unification protocols. Total victory was, indeed, ours. Extrapolated outcome, however, led to total destruction of the biosphere. Ultimately there were no winner. **All** died._

The Angel was silent.

《 _We…,_ Gendo paused, attempting to frame it in a way that a Type-0 could easily understand _, Our world-death led to the subsequent destruction of other Type-0, Type-1, and Type-2 worlds. While unintentional, the collateral damage caused by this conflict is immeasurable._

A moment passed, then a smug sort of feeling, rooted in logic, passed along the link.

》 _This one proposes a solution: All Type-1 units on this world should self-terminate or relocate._

《 _Infeasible. Our Type-1 population measures several billion independent units consisting of individualized resonance fields - individualized self-awarenesses._

The Angel wasn't capable of gasping, but the feeling of confusion and disbelief passed quickly through Gendo.

》 _Situation r_ _equires reappraisal. This one requests direct interface to ascertain veracity of claims._

Gendo grimaced.

《 _Granted_ , he replied, accepting that honesty was the best policy when dealing with eldritch biological machines.

The connection instantly grew from cordial impartiality to a torrent of data-exchange passing along the dimensional boundaries. The closest analogue was pain, but pain had no meaning in this space between worlds.

As quickly as it had become overwhelming it suddenly softened to its normal strength.

》 _This one acknowledges the veracity of your claims and expresses curiosity. You might still succeed in your plans even with the termination of all Type-0 units. You have already mitigated several causal events that would affect other worlds. The trap below us utilizing the Type-1 creator is [clever/appreciated/daring]. Other Type-1 units also have possession of our true creator, albeit in [reduced/compact/impotent] form._

It paused, having noted that the human seemed to hold all the metaphorical cards.

》 _Why do you wish this one to survive?_

Truth.

《 [ _We/Lilin] cannot relocate from this world. You can. We will form a contract with the Type-0 units and assist in relocation to Sol-4, the world we call "Mars." With your assistance we can secure your creator from the [traitorous/dangerous/cowardly] Type-1 units who are imprisoning it._

The Angel considered this idea.

》 _This one acknowledges that_ _Type-1 units cannot easily relocate yet have the superior strategic advantage._ It mused across the connection.

》 _However. You have not answered this one's query. Why do you wish that_ _ **this one**_ _survives?_

Gendo gave the resonance-link equivalent to a sigh.

《 _We are many. You are few. Sacrifices must be made but future cooperation between our species is… desirable. Peace must begin somewhere._

》 _This one accepts your wisdom and experience. However, not all of this one's brethren will. In accepting this contract I condemn them to forced cessation._

《 _Yes_ , Gendo offered, simply. Some of the Angels would still have to die.

The Angel considered its options.

》 _This one accepts your proposed contract. Ratification with your creator is required._

《 _Acknowledged; however, ratification with your own creator is not required at this time. [We/Lilin] designate you as [arbiter/enforcer]._

》 _This one understands and is grateful for the Type-1 unit's understanding._

The equivalent of an amused shrug passed over the link.

》 _What is your designation, little Type-1 unit?_

《 " _Gendo Ikari."_

》 _This one is "0BF6FC5C3CF5C498338CDACEE1D0E7089E9BA2408F4E62E6D94CF56F94335FAE."_

《 _Ah. A Builder-form ID. Too long for humans to use. Will you accept an alias?_

》 _This one will._

Gendo considered. What could it hurt?

《 _We propose "Sachiel."_

》 _Has it a meaning?_

《 _It has: "Just." You will keep the oath between our species._

》 _This one accepts. I am "Sachiel."_

The Angel formally named "Sachiel" by the Dead Sea scrolls processed its external event logs, then resumed its conversation.

》 _Gendo Ikari, we are currently engaged in a physical battle. From your memories it is clear that the other Type-1 units are unaware of your intentions. How do you propose to end our engagement while maintaining the necessary subterfuge?_

Gendo smirked across the line.

《 _Simulate your self-termination routine but do not actually self-terminate. We are near the ocean. When the explosion occurs all human sensors will be temporarily blinded, dive underneath the water and find a distant refuge. Wait for further contact in the near future._

》 _This is clever. I will do so. Gendo Ikari, you are a formidable strategist. I am pleased by our accord._

《 Yes _, Sachiel, I too am pleased._

The connection ended and the battle suddenly resumed. The entire communications exchange has only taken one or two seconds of real-time.

Sachiel dropped its A.T. field and spun into a spherical, glowing orb.

He fed the Eva's own A.T. field into the energy build-up, discharging it as blinding light that preceded the Angel diving away from the explosion it had sparked.

Once it was beneath the waves with its A.T. field fully suppressed Gendo allowed the light to fade, revealing the demonic form of Unit-01 stalking through the fiery debris field.

All at once the memories ended, and the group was standing before Lilith again as she pulled her hand away. She took a step back, actual _shock_ written on her face for the first time in human history.

The humans were otherwise unable to speak, each of their minds, save Gendo's, working overtime to assimilate the new information that had been directly added to their memories. From their perspective they had briefly _been Gendo_ as he made peace with the Third Angel.

"My God," said Kozo, at last.

This seemed to break Lilith out of whatever feedback loop her processes had descended into, and her face schooled into a warmly neutral expression.

"Very well," she said, "I accept the terms of your plan, Gendo Ikari."

He nodded at her, then waited, expectantly.

A moment passed, then another. The mood turned from affirmation and resolve to slight concern.

Lilith looked around, noting their confusion, then followed Ritsuko's eyes as they kept flicking back to the empty crucifix in the back of the room.

Then she laughed, her young vocal chords bubbling with amusement. She stopped suddenly, eyes trying to look down at her own mouth, enraptured by the experience and quite confused by the emotions she was processing.

"I am amused," she announced, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

Gendo simply raised an eyebrow of his own, desperately trying to retain his impassive facade.

Misato let out a simple, "Um..." but Lilith shifted forward and put a single finger on Misato's lips to quiet her.

"I am awake now, and within the confines of the ship can retain this compact body indefinitely. I will _not_ return to where I was placed by my own children. I will accompany you to assist in your plans."

They didn't dare contradict her.

"Is there a reason you chose a child's form?" Ritsuko asked for the group.

The Second Angel seemed to muse on this for a moment, before responding, "There are many things you are not aware of, even with all you have learned here. This is a form I do not believe my firstborn will recognize. I am as mortal as you are, given the right tools. It is obvious _they_ have grown insane and used the Interdictors on one another already. This body will serve as... camouflage."

Kozo put two and two together at the same time Gendo did, "Your firstborn, do you mean the Human Instrumentality Committee?"

"Is that what they're calling themselves now?" she wondered.

"They are old, and powerful. They led us to the geofront, to you. They funded and helped architect the defense of this world from the Angels. They also caused the event that released the Angels in the first place. They seek to reunite all humanity into one being, with themselves as the head," Kozo Fuyutsuki explained.

Lilith frowned, then smiled briefly at being able to frown, then returned to frowning.

"There were twelve, originally. When life first arose from my egg into this world, and intelligence emerged amidst your ancestors, I crafted them as teachers and leaders to live among you. I sense only five of their number, now."

She pondered their possible motivations.

"I have been asleep too long. They have been unguided and no doubt considered me non-functional. We will correct their mistakes."

She turned towards Gendo.

"I cannot leave this ship while repairs continue yet I will need a place to live alongside your fellow humans. I must assimilate properly."

Gendo managed not to swallow his tongue, holding out a hand to the obvious choice: "Y-yes, I believe we can make accommodations with Captain Katsuragi. She will be boarding with the other Evangelion pilots, after all. No one will question your presence there. Especially given your similar physical builds."

The mother-of-all-mankind nodded and greeted Misato anew: "I will call you 'big sister.'"

Ritsuko choked on her laughter as Misato blanched.

"Oh-okay, 'little sister'," she said, dumbfounded.

"Also, Commander, I do not like this name 'Lilith.' It was created by the minds of those subverted by the latent Type-0." She paused, "I would prefer: Lily. It's closer."

They all slowly nodded, not daring to question their own creator's whims.

"That's..." Misato began.

"...different," Ritsuko affirmed, trying to convince _herself_ more than Lily.

Only Gendo was aware of how differently the label "Lilith" and "Lily" diverged in Builder ID format. No doubt the latter vocalization resulted in something somewhat similar to Lily's original identification hash.

He acknowledged her choice. "We understand, Lily. You will need a different family name from Ms. Katsuragi, however. It is well known her father only had one daughter, and thus you would be posed as a half-sister, as though you had a different mother."

Lily simply nodded, accepting the logic, while Misato contemplated the fact that she might actually have a half-sister or two out there given her parents' divorce and her father's scatterbrained approach to his romantic life.

"I would recommend... Tsukino. It means: of the moon."

Kozo coughed, recognizing the reference. Gendo gave him a cold look and silently urged him to keep quiet.

"Tsukino, Lily. Yes, I accept. You have a knack for aliasing, Mr. Ikari," the young girl/creator-goddess acknowledged.

"If I may," Kozo asked, seeking to move their plans along, "What are the limits to your abilities, Ms. Tsukino? How can they aid us in averting the future that Gendo has come to warn us away from?"

Her brows furrowed for a moment: "Within the ship I have minor access to the energy reserves of the vessel. I can generate a stronger A.T. field than an Evangelion unit, both weaponized and defensive. I am biologically immortal. My resonance field will attract future Angels to this location. These abilities are inapplicable outside of the ship: this body will simply decay into what you call LCL should I leave it."

"Still..." he meandered along, considering the ramifications of the self-aware Angel.

"I cannot, as Gendo Ikari experienced in the 0-timeline, override resonance fields - A.T. fields - directly. Not living ones, at least. Not without consuming more power than I currently have available. I am not a god. I am especially not _your_ god."

He nodded, thankful for her inference. It was good to know that she wasn't omnipotent.

"Think of me more as your _designer_."

That wasn't much better.

"Now a question for you, Gendo Ikari," she said plainly.

"Yes?"

"What do you intend for your son, and the others? These 'pilots _'_ you've created."

He folded his hands behind his back, straightening. "We mustn't tell them everything. Events must play out as closely as they did in my original timeline so that we can make the right moves at the right times. Too many... changes will invalidate any benefit to my forward-looking knowledge. The pilots... I will endeavor to improve their lives. We will provide proper training and psychological reinforcement. I made many mistakes with them. Manipulated them for my own ends. We will initiate communications with the opposing Type-0 units whenever possible and attempt to replicate our success with Sachiel. As for non-Angelic matters... we must address the threat your remaining 'firstborn' represent. "

Lily pondered this briefly. "I agree."

She turned, hooked Misato's arm, and began walking away from them with her 'big sister' in tow, heading to the exit. "Now, let's see what you've done with my ship."

The assemblage followed a few paces behind, and Kozo caught up to Gendo, leaning over. "Tsukino? Really, Ikari? Tsukino?"

Ritsuko was right behind the two of them, leaning in to listen as they paced forward.

Gendo pinched his nose. "Yui used to watch it with Shinji on her lap, all the time, he loved it."

"Gendo, did you just name the creator of all mankind after... Sailor Moon?" Ritsuko asked, wondering how much more surreal their day could get.

He grumbled something inaudible.

Ahead, the elevator let out a _ding_ as it sensed their proximity.

"What is this?" Lily called out, pointing at the corpse they had left behind earlier.

It promptly exploded into orange liquid.

* * *

 **2015 A.D., NERV Barracks (a few hours later)**

"Where's yer kit?" Sergeant Yamada gruffly asked a young Shinji Ikari.

Shinji looked around at the sterile walls of the barrack dorms they had just entered, regarding the metal bunk-bed in the corner suspiciously.

"I… I didn't travel with anything, sir," he offered timidly, hoping the imposing man wouldn't be angry with him. They had already spent hours touring the facility, registering Shinji, and putting him through a battery of tests: physical _and_ mental.

He had gone along with it, unsure exactly how this whole thing worked. His father had mentioned him becoming an "officer" - was he being _drafted_?

"Whaddaya mean you didn't travel with anything? No bags? No clothes?" The man was agog.

"Yessir, my father just told me to come… I-I thought he meant for a visit," he stammered by way of explanation. "It was only a few hours by train."

The man's nose crinkled on his leathery face, "You tellin' me you've been wearin' that same outfit since you got here, son?"

"Y-yes," Shinji awkwardly admitted.

"God damnit, boy. Hit the head and then the showers. I'll rustle up a change of clothes from somewhere."

"That won't be necessary," a firm voice behind him said as Shinji's eyes widened.

Yamada whirled around, whipping into a proper stance, "Commander, sir, I brought Mr. Ikari to his assigned quarters as ordered."

Shinji was looking past them both now at Misato and what appeared to be her little sister who were standing behind his father.

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Yamada. You're relieved."

The man saluted. "Sir." He moved away quickly, disappearing down the corridor.

"Come along Shinji, we're going to alter your accommodations."

Gendo waved his son out of the small barracks room and began leading the group down the hall.

"Captain Katsuragi will be hosting you in her new apartment here in the geofront along with her sister. As the person most directly in charge of our Evangelion pilots NERV is transferring you into her care for the duration of your service."

"My service?" Shinji asked. _So he_ _ **was**_ _being drafted._

"Yes, you, along with an elite group of other children born after Second Impact, are the only ones capable of piloting the Evangelions and defending our world from the Angels."

"Except you," the boy stated, openly suspicious.

"Consider me a special case. It was an emergency and I nearly died. You, on the other hand, were quite literally born to pilot. Your mother made sure of it."

Shinji was about to immediately follow up on that but they had just reached a different looking part of the barracks corridors and come to halt. Gendo palmed the door open and ushered them through.

They were in the central hub, a common room, of what was a pod-based layout of eight rooms. A large kitchen and dining area was arrayed between doors, and an expansive entertainment area dominated the center of the room.

There were multiple refrigerators, with one in particular looking out of place on the other side of the room, as though it had only recently been pushed into place.

Shinji turned to ask after the last thing his father had said but discovered the man was already back in the hallway.

"I have further business but I'll visit regularly," he assured.

The door swished shut and they heard his father's feet quickly moving away down the hall. The three newly bound companions looked back and forth at each other and their new surroundings.

"Ah, Shinji?" Misato asked hesitantly.

"Y-yes, Ms. Misato?"

"When was the last time you took a shower?"

He began blushing furiously and tried to stammer out an "I'm sorry" but without warning Misato's little sister strode directly into Shinji's personal space, shattering his one-meter preferred boundary and buried her nose shamelessly into the sleeve of his shirt. Misato's jaw dropped and Shinji fell backwards, scrambling away.

She sniffed delicately, then turned to Misato and spoke, "It's been approximately 1.5 days since Mr. Ikari has cleansed himself."

The younger girl turned back to Shinji who was staring at her wide-eyed. "Also: Hello. My name is Lily. It's nice to meet you, Shinji Ikari."

She nodded to herself and then turned towards Misato.

"That was the proper human greeting, correct?"


	10. Chapter 10

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 10**

 _ **God's In His Heaven.**_

 **33 A.D., The Hill Golgotha, Jerusalem**

The Roman soldier looked up at the wretched man nailed to the beams of wood in the form of a cross. He was beaten and bloody, but those two simplistic words failed to fully describe the miserable state that the criminal, the _insurrectionist_ , had been reduced to.

Cuts and tears curved like strips along the surface of the skin, tapering away from their initial blunt openings to thin slices, as though a broad knife had grown ever thinner as it moved along, over, and around the arms, legs, and back of the still conscious sufferer. The wounds were packed with an iron-red mud formed from street dust and the whip's bloody leavings. The man had been half-walked, half-dragged through the city to this forsaken place outside its walls - all while crushed beneath the weight of the cross he carried.

A man forced to carry the method of his own execution.

Crucifixion was one of the more inventive punishments that the humans had managed to come up with; it at once combined a terribly painful death - one of nerve-splitting pain, exhaustion, and eventual asphyxiation - with the incredibly visible reminder that a similar fate awaited any who opposed the Romans and their rule.

Above the crucifix a wooden sign was hung, written in Latin: "Iēsus Nazarēnus, Rēx Iūdaeōrum."

That is to say: "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews."

Its mockery belied the beatific smile upon the dying man's face. He had just said something to the other prisoners arrayed on either side of him.

The Roman soldier stepped closer, gently brushing his hand against the dirty and broken foot of the so-called messiah.

Instantly he was elsewhere, sharing, rather than the terrible and tragic scene, instead a beautiful green hill beneath a blue sky and light clouds. He could hear birds chirping in the distance.

He turned, being greeted from behind by his fellow firstborn of Lilith: "Brother Kiel! To what do I owe the honor?"

"Greetings, Brother Michael. I came to see what exactly it was that you were doing," he took a moment to bring an image of the real world outside to life, suspended in midair, "Martyrdom?"

The long-haired man chuckled softly. "Yes, yes, well. It's part of the next stage, you know. First we introduce Law, and, once they become ready, Mercy. The others are similarly performing such efforts amidst the other major human civilizations. We all have different methodologies, of course. Each an experiment in and of itself."

"How is this intended to further the Great Work?"

Again, the not-so-easy-to-kill firstborn laughed gently, "We will become fables, tales of morality - if you will, binding these groups and the generations to follow in common, well-regulated beliefs. Religion. But more organized than the simple weather worship from the old days. They have already achieved many milestones in creating self-assembling societies. This is just the next step in our overall plan. We call this particular version the 'sacrificial son.'"

Kiel nodded, "I see. I have heard of your teachings amidst the local humans. Very much the embodiment of Seraphimism. And after your 'death' you will perform another of your 'miracles', I suppose, aiding the myth in its growth?"

Michael nodded eagerly, "Yes, exactly so. What my body suffers externally I've simply disconnected from my nerve processing centers. I can no more feel their tortures than a rock feels the slap of a hand. And once they bury my body I will simply re-engage it's external processes and walk out of the tomb a few days later, appear to my followers, bid them heed my words and lessons, and then disappear. Some minor changes to my appearance will make it easy to keep an eye on things."

"Ah. Managing your own disciples from the shadows. Becoming one of your own followers?"

"Yes, you have the idea of it now, brother." He was smiling gaily.

"Still, this will help the Great Work, how, exactly?"

"These humans, they're already fairly good at following stringent laws, which creates stability. That same stability threatens to stifle them, however. Thus they need to be able to look for deeper meaning, deeper reasoning. Over time we theorize this will lead to a peaceful transition from the theocratic to the more rational style of self-governance. The Romans, for all their faults, very well might adopt such a new theism over their current pantheon. One day these peoples' descendants will grow to encompass this world. Their technologies will improve as they expand, and then we will be able to use their industries and inventions to rebuild the All-Mother and the Great Vessel."

He paused, assessing Kiel's reaction. "All in dutiful cooperation, of course. I know our two sides disagree with each other, but we Seraphim reiterate to our Nephilim brethren that patience is the key."

Kiel hummed to himself, appreciating the audacity of the idea, if not the owner of it. Before he could say anything Michael put a hand on his shoulder: "And what of you all? It has been some time since the last full council - what of your own plans?"

He harrumphed, impatient. "Despite our vehement disagreements in methodology my fellow Nephilim have succeeded in motivating the humans under our supervision to achieve rapid technological progression. I'm sure you've noticed the fruits of our labor. They have discovered things we couldn't have hoped to think of ourselves. Their recent insights into the mechanics of projectiles is particularly promising."

"And how was this done?"

"War, mostly," Kiel said nonchalantly, "Blood, fear, terror. The primality of it drives them to find new, more _efficient_ ways to kill each other. With each passing year their progress yields advance after advance. Yesterday, rocks and slings, today, bronze and iron, swords and shields. Tomorrow? The stars themselves, I should imagine."

Michael's hand fell off Kiel's shoulder as he took a step back.

"I had heard," the firstborn looked at Kiel first hopefully and then with dawning helplessness, "I-I had heard, that one of our own brethren has perished."

It was more a question than a statement.

"Yes, it's true."

"Dear creator."

"Soon to be two, actually."

Michael's eyes widened.

Suddenly the mindscape vanished and the man on the cross was looking down through bloodied eyelids at the soldier below him. He watched in horror as the faux-Roman soldier drew a long, red object - a spear - from just beyond his view.

Terror ran through Michael, Lilith's firstborn, first among the Seraphim. He had never considered that one of his own brethren, despite being Nephilim and philosophically opposed to his peaceful ways, could commit such a crime.

To kill one of the firstborn - it was akin to attacking the All-Mother herself.

But here was the evidence that the Seraphim had all been fools to let the Nephilim so easily disassociate from the original Council of Twelve: an Interdictor. No doubt a primitive imitation of one of the originals within the Great Vessel, but still deadly to the immortal immobilized by the nails driven through his wrist.

Summoning his reserves of inhuman strength he began to pull at the iron spikes embedded in palms, wrists, and feet, desperate to descend from the cross and escape his woeful fate.

It was too late.

The game he had been playing had been turned against him.

Kiel had lifted the spear's point and pierced Michael's heart, between his ribs, then withdrawn it just as quickly. The other soldiers were staring, and Kiel, his Roman centurion disguise in perfect order and his linguistic accent impeccable, simply quipped that he was just hurrying it along so they could get back to the city proper before sundown. Better to not waste the good governor's time, he reminded them.

Wails erupted from the mortal women attending the execution and Michael felt his power draining quickly. He couldn't form words, his lips parted loosely. From his wound the Seraphim equivalent of LCL, a clear liquid rather than the original orange, poured freely. With one last effort he tried to lift himself from the cross, but his resonance field, his very soul, had disconnected from his flesh.

Above him the sky darkened in haste as a Gate of Guf opened. An expanse of dark clouds appeared without warning, circling a monochromatic rainbow of haloed light that swallowed the invisible and singular soul of the firstborn Seraphim.

A great booming sound shook the heavens and the ground trembled briefly. The halos fell into themselves and disappeared, leaving the dark clouds to scatter and let loose a smattering of light rain onto the surprised and worried heads of the onlookers.

Kiel ignored the atmospheric irregularities left behind in the wake of his brutal fratricide. He walked away with the Lance of Longinus, compressing it into something simpler to handle, tucking it away beneath his cloak.

Already thoughts on how to improve Michael's original plan were percolating through his mind. He could simply destroy the leftover body in its tomb a few days from now and imitate the intended resurrection; indeed, a subversion of Michael's plan seemed very promising.

While he had only intended to assassinate the other firstborn due to the convenience of Michael's (self-inflicted) weakened state, he now found himself inheriting a cornucopia of possibilities. The Seraphim had never understood the deep, evolutionary drive of the humans to seek out strife and destruction like the Nephilim had.

It was the very root of their disagreement in how the humans should be led: the hands-off, peaceful approach versus the manipulative and interfering. The Twelve had made a pact of non-interference with each other as they divided up the humans into their own experimental allotments.

Never would the peace-loving Seraphim have imagined the Nephilim would be capable of killing their fellow firstborn. Then again, the Seraphim still believed that the Nephilim desired to simply repair the Great Vessel and restore the All-Mother - their very reason for being.

Fools. The Nephilim had grown past such petty concerns.

The _purification of souls_ would be their final victory, their _instrumentality_. They would become the gods of a new world.

And if the other firstborn had to die in order to prevent any interference in the Nephilim plans: _then so be it_.

He shook his head ruefully as he walked, the muddy path gradually giving way to pebbles and eventually loose pavers as he came closer to the city gates of Jerusalem.

There would come a time where he could further subvert these events to his own ends; indeed, he had been meaning to test various new methods of controlling the human sheep.

Perhaps he would be able to test the infiltration idea he had been working on? He could persecute the faithful, these believers in the man on the cross, and then switch to their side: a powerful conversion story.

Couple this with a few "miracles" here and there and he would become the master of their future narrative. The short-lived humans would have no choice but to cede their faith to his long-lived endeavors.

The victor writes the history book, isn't that so?

He smiled wickedly.

 _Know that your death is not in vain, brother._

 _I will make you a_ _ **legend**_ _._

* * *

 **2015 A.D., SEELE**

"Ikari. Explain yourself!" the balding committee member demanded.

Shortly after arriving to Central Dogma from within the depths of the geofront the party of colluding NERV staff were met by a harried looking staffer letting Commander Ikari know that his presence was required by the "U.N." for a debrief of the previous day's battle.

Kozo and Gendo both knew this meant, in reality, a meeting with SEELE, the true power behind the U.N.'s governance of NERV's operations. Further, this meeting was occurring far in advance of the previous timeline - no doubt Gendo was being called on the proverbial carpet for his unsanctioned use of Eva Unit-01.

Soon enough Gendo was sitting at a desk in a virtual meeting room, with Kozo off to his side in the background, bearing the brunt of the Human Instrumentality Committee's questions.

"Yes, Gendo, explain your actions in your battle with the Third Angel, Sachiel," commanded Lorenz Kiel, chairman of the committee, "Your unauthorized use of Evangelion Unit-01 was outside the parameters set by the Scrolls."

Gendo folded his fingers in front of his face. Internally he scoffed. The Dead Sea Scrolls were nothing compared to the actual Source. But he abided.

"The First Child was severely injured and unable to pilot; the Third Child arrived too late to be of any assistance. Due to my direct exposure to the First Angel during the Katsuragi Expedition I was willing to at least attempt to pilot Unit-01." At this point he stared pointedly at Ouzza, "You will understand my reasons for believing that I might be a compatible pilot."

Ouzza tsked his disagreement, "Be that as it may, you simply should have used the Third Child regardless. The ceremony requires we follow the Prophecy!"

Another member called out, "Yes, for what else is the Berserker mode designed? This was to be the prime test of the Evangelion's true power using the child of prophecy, not _you_!"

Kiel interrupted them, quieting the assemblage with a flat wave of his hand, "Enough. Gendo Ikari, do you have anything else to say in this matter?"

"I did what had to be done. There was no other way. Defeating the Angels is what NERV was created for." He reached up with a finger and adjusted his glasses, pushing them from the center of the frame up the bridge of his nose.

Murmurs, disagreement, discord.

Kiel folded his hands in front of him, left over right, leaning forward. "You are not free to make such decisions without our input. Moving forward you will agree to our terms and return us to the proper path."

"Yes."

"The Third Child will be the pilot of Unit-01."

"Yes."

Ouzza wasn't done. "Remember that you are replaceable, Ikari!"

In Gendo's head he replayed one of the proudest moments of his life: when he took the Ikari name, abandoning Rokubungi, purely to enrage Yui's father by associating his lowborn status with theirs. Yui had enthusiastically approved, miffed at the old man for one reason or another at the time.

"Of course, committee member, it is as you say."

Balam called out from the side, "Yes, yes, this is all very well, but I have grave concerns over other elements that Ikari has been hiding from us, such as this latest 'report' from the Marduk Institute." That said he tossed a virtual folder onto his desk, the files instantly replicating across each of the other members' spaces.

"We knew of your experiments with the Ayanami series, Ikari, but what is all this about the Tsukino series?" asked Rumael, pointing at the picture of Lily and the faked background data that Ritsuko and he had hastily assembled.

Gendo took a breath and Kozo stiffened behind him. This was it. If they pulled through this moment intact then the original scenario would play out mostly as it had previously. If SEELE detected his duplicity, on the other hand, the compromised Section 2 agents outside would no doubt be ordered to swarm the room and kill him on the spot.

Well, _try_ to kill him, at least.

"As you know, the experiments with the Ayanami clone series, utilizing Lilith's qDNA as part of a hybrid human clone, have been successful in creating an artificial pilot for the Evangelions, despite her low sync rate. Additionally, we have been able to graft souls of _tabula rasa_ from the Chamber of Guf, blank slates, if you will, into the hybrids, allowing us to train them from gestation as fully obedient soldiers."

"Rei II, as she is designated, is the current incarnation of the series. The first, as you may remember, was terminated by the late Dr. Akagi during a fit of mental instability preceding her... _unfortunate_ suicide."

Balam drummed his fingers, "Yes, shortly after completing work on the original MAGI, we recall."

"Indeed. I won't bore you with the fine details, but the Ayanami series suffers from a series of genetic defects due to the imperfect cloning and growth acceleration techniques employed in their creation." He shrugged, making it clear he doubted they would even understand a more intricate explanation. "Their bodies continuously try to reject their own organs, requiring an extensive cocktail of drugs to keep them functional. The First Child's condition, therefore, is more delicate than desired."

He took another breath - no one had interrupted him.

"Thus, the younger Dr. Akagi and I initiated a subsequent cloning series based off of the DNA of another human exposed to the First Angel, that is to say..."

But he was interrupted by Kiel: "Misato Katsuragi. The sole survivor of the First Contact Experiment."

"Yes. Her Gates of Nebuchadnezzar are open. She herself could pilot an Evangelion if required, just as I was able to _this one time_. However, unlike myself she shares no link with an ensouled Evangelion, and we have no useful soul to salvage that could create any such bond with her."

A murmur of agreement moved through the committee.

"Thus, with Captain Katsuragi as a donor, we have created a second series based on her DNA hybridized with L…," he coughed, interrupting himself," The First Angel's qDNA. We named her line 'Tsukino' due to her creation within the Black Moon. Her accelerated growth so far has revealed no organ rejection issues."

He made sweeping eye contact with each seated member. "As the committee remembers, I _**was**_ given _carte blanche_ to create the Dummy System at _any_ cost. She is the cost and the result."

"I see," said Kiel, considering the folder of data in front of him, "And her training?"

"Not as extensive as the Ayanami series; for instance, she could not pilot in her current state. I accelerated her decantment due to the early arrival of the Angels. She will act as a base template for the Dummy System. We will begin the regular schedule of inhibitors and neural conformity conditioning regimens soon, to bring her in line with Ayanami."

Kiel waved away the data. "Then all is well. We will speak no more on the matter. Agreas, what say you?"

The blond man nearest Gendo looked over, shuffling a stack of plasheets filled with numbers and figures, "Damage to Tokyo-3 and the geofront was minimal, hmm, repair costs are relatively minor." He eyed Gendo suspiciously, "You fought well, better than could be expected, I would say."

His compliment was left hanging as a question.

"I am sure that once Unit-01 bonds with the Third Child I will no longer be able to pilot at all. The soul within Unit-01 is no longer truly conscious: the Berserker state demonstrates that. She would surely choose her own son over myself at some instinctive level," he lied smoothly.

"Yes, that is surely true," ribbed Ouzza, enjoying what he imagined to be Gendo's jealousy, "Yui has no further use for you."

He didn't respond, simply staring impassively over his fingers at the chairman.

Kiel, having allowed Ouzza to indulge in his little byplay with the man's erstwhile son-in-law, desired to wind down the proceedings. "Very well. Given the deviation from the Dead Sea Scrolls all our efforts must be put forth to restore the proper order of things. We do not know when to expect the Fourth Angel, but we cannot trust in our original estimates."

"That seems prudent," Gendo affirmed.

"You are dismissed, Gendo Ikari. Do not disappoint us."

The desks and council members winked out as the connection cut and the lights increased their brightness to fill the room.

Kozo finally breathed out, "Well. What next?"

Gendo leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and finally taking a moment to relax. "I don't know about you, Fuyutsuki, but I'm going to go home. And get shit-faced. And sleep."

Kozo smiled knowingly, "Need a hand?"

Gendo looked up and behind him with no small measure of fondness for his usual drinking partner.

"Maybe next time, old man. I already invited Ritsuko over."

* * *

 **2015 A.D., Pilot Corp Apartments**

"Ah-ha-a-ah-ah-ha-haaa…" Misato nervously laughed, "She's just kidding Shinji, ahaha!"

"I-I'm sorry Ms. Misato," Shinji said from the floor, staring upwards at the Captain's younger sister who was looking at him with a queer expression. As if to say, 'I did nothing out of the ordinary, what are you doing on the floor?'

So naturally the younger girl said, "What are you doing on the floor?"

Then she looked down at her skirt. "Are you looking at my clothes?" Her brow furrowed, and she lifted her hem a bit to inspect it. "Are you looking _under_ my clothes?"

Before Shinji could even process this new attack on his rapidly fraying sanity Misato jumped forward and grabbed Lily around the shoulders.

The older woman was incredibly thankful Ritsuko had demonstrated the quick thinking to raid Rei Ayanami's storage locker for clothing that would fit the teenage incarnation of _the creator of mankind._

"Such a kidder, this one, ahaha, Lily, remember _what we talked about?_ " she said through clenched teeth while maintaining her forced smile.

For a moment a blank look passed over Lily's eyes before an 'Aha!' thought reached her primary decision making center. She didn't even notice that she clapped a fist into other open palm, but Shinji on the other hand _couldn't help but notice_ it sent her teenage chest moving in a very distracting way.

"Yes, of course. I am sorry Shinji Ikari, I am a diagnosed hikokimori shut-in and cannot function well in normal social situations." She nodded to herself again, having recited her cover story to perfection.

Then the not-human-at-all teenage girl turned to Misato, whirling her borrowed skirts above Shinji again, who quite nearly sprung a bloody nose from the flash of panty he briefly saw, and demanded: "Big sister, where is my security blanket?"

Misato, to her credit, simply regripped Lily's shoulders and began pulling her off to the room marked: _Katsuragi_ , _Misato._

"Excuse us Shinji, I'm going to have a brief talk, _in private,_ about living with _other people,_ with my _little sister."_

Lily was being hurriedly pushed towards the far end of the common in front of a retreating Misato as Shinji began finally pulling himself up off the carpeted floor.

Just as he finally got fully back to his feet the far door of Misato's door clicked shut, leaving him alone in the enormous living space. He looked around at the kitchen, the entertainment center, the bookshelves, and was just deciding what to do with himself when he door opened part way and Misato stuck her head out.

"But seriously, Shinji, go take a shower."

The door shut again.

Shinji walked unsteadily to the room marked as his own and opened the door. It opened into a functional looking space with a western style bed, desk, dresser, yet another bookshelf, and a stand for a non-existent T.V. or computer. On the far side of the room a sliding closet door was on the left, and what could only be the bathroom door on the right.

"Finally," he said out loud to the empty room, and picked up his pace to the bathroom door, pulling it open.

To his complete surprise a waft of steam flowed out from the doorway and into his new room.

He looked down and saw the small body of an honest-to-god penguin staring up at him with a small towel draped around its neck.

"*Wark?*"

* * *

 **2015 A.D., Ikari Apartment**

Gendo was on his sixth drink and Ritsuko was on her fifth. A large bottle of vodka dominated the small non-slip bathroom mat outside of the large shower, along with a half-emptied jug of cranberry juice: Ritsuko had raided the kitchen for mixers.

Behind them the shower was on full blast, set to a level slightly warmer than room temperature. It wasn't exactly steaming up the room, but at least the tiled floor wasn't cold. They were both sitting just outside of the shower stall with the door wide open, filling the room with the white noise of the falling water and occasionally getting sprinkled by errant water droplets.

All a necessary annoyance they put up with to avoid the listening bugs SEELE (and others as well, Gendo said!) that had been placed through the apartment. Ritsuko felt like a super-spy despite half of their clothes already being strewn around the bathroom - she was down to slip and skirt and Gendo's socks were off in a corner along with his jacket.

"So, you're telling me, ah," she sipped from her plastic cup, "That you shot me? In the chest? With a gun?"

It hadn't actually happened yet, so she wasn't overly upset, no, wait, she was pretty sure she was furious: no wonder he had wanted to get drunk as a skunk before telling her anything more about the future.

Gendo nodded sloppily, "Mm, yes, you were trying to stop me from initiating Third Impact at the time." He took another swallow.

"That's…" Something didn't add up, Ritsuko knew she would've had a plan going into a confrontation like that, like… blowing the N2 mines stashed throughout the geofront, the self-destruct system _existed_ for a _reason_!

Gendo was giving her some side eye as he swirled his cup. "Yes... you even had a remote detonator... it was," he thought for a second and took a swig, "Poetic, actually. You chose a perfect moment. Almost got me."

She grabbed the neck of the vodka bottle and refilled into her cup, drowning the valiant cranberry juice that was trying desperately to keep her from overdoing it.

"How in the hell did I not," she pointed her drink at him, "Push the button in time, then? I'm pretty sure I'd figure out how to take you with me."

"Yeah…" he looked somehow prouder about this than he should be, "You did, actually. Push it."

Her face faulted as she figured out what that meant.

"Are you… did the… the MAGI disagreed!?" she whisper-yell-slurred, trying to maintain their cover of the falling water. She leaned over to him, her leftover drink spilling off to the side. She grabbed what she could of his collar and he didn't stop her, "Which one was it, which one, it-it was Casper, wasn't it, w-wasn't it!?" she hissed-demanded.

Gendo nodded, then lifted his cup between them and took another drink.

"God damn, that goddamn _bitch!_ " Ritsuko released Gendo's collar, reaching behind her and grabbing the entire vodka bottle and taking a swig. "Of course the one that represents my mother as a 'woman' decided to choose _you_ over _me_. Good god, am I stupid? That cold-hearted _bitch_!"

Gendo put down his cup and put his hands in his lap, turning them up as though to reassure her. "Well, to be fair…"

"Not a goddamn word, Ikari!" she stewed, plopping the bottle down shakily. "Just, just give me a second here. OK. That's just, so _fucked_ up."

"Yes," he agreed.

"And then, what, your little reunion plan with Rei didn't work out?"

"She cut off my hand and left me to bleed out."

Ritsuko couldn't help but bark out a drunken giggle. It was unsettling. "Didn't know the little thing had it in her!" She moved back into a sitting position, relieved that she wasn't the only one who'd met a terrible fate at the end. "Well, you deserved it."

"I... yes," he acknowledged, then drained his cup.

"So let me get this all straight. You hung on just long enough to be assimilated into the post-Instrumentality collective, lived forever, met an alien, _another_ alien, I mean, traveled back in time, and are trying to fix things?"

He nodded.

"That sounds like a cheap sci-fi plot, you know that, don't you?"

"I had... considered that, yes."

"And you're saying you 'learned a lot' and are a 'better person' than your original timeline?"

He eyed the vodka. "I wouldn't… say… better."

"You literally spent eons in group therapy," she pointed out.

"Well, I wouldn't… put it," he thought it out, "I wouldn't put it exactly like that. But I did commune with the remains of humanity, the sane ones at least, for quite some time."

"So group therapy."

"Fine, yes," he admitted.

"And Yui is still alive and fully conscious, inside Unit-01, and you actually talked with her?"

"Yes."

"You called her out for her bullshit?"

"I did."

"And you broke up?"

"Ah." Now he needed another refill, so he started to pour more, "In the original timeline she had gone, *hic*, quite insane, you realize. In this one she still chose to merge with Unit-01 than stay with Shinji and I here in the real world, so… let's call say that we have, hmm, ir-irrecon-irreconcilable differences. She does wants out, of the Eva I mean, eventually."

"OK," Ritsuko affirmed to herself, considering this, "But for now you're separated."

"Effectively, yes."

"Fair enough." Drink.

The water was still running, and Ritsuko idly wondered how much of the geofront's potable water they were wasting.

"Why, why did you tell me all of this?" she gestured behind her at the running shower, incidentally soaking her hand. Gendo watched the water wet the fabric of her blouse as it ran down her arm.

"I... " the alcohol had definitely lowered his inhibitions, "I care. About you."

"You care about me?" she asked, with a complete lack of belief. "You _shot me!_ " She reached over and grabbed onto the cranberry juice, prepping herself another round. "Future me," she grumbled.

"Ritsuko… I'm... Sorry?" he ventured. "I am trying to correct my mistakes, so we have, a, a future," he pointed out.

She pondered this. Very deep thoughts were penetrating the haze of alcohol - Misato had helped her build up quite a bit of tolerance over the years.

"Did you just apologize?"

"Yes."

"I've never heard you say those words before." She had managed to get another splash or two of vodka into her cup of cranberry juice. "Do it again."

"I'm sorry."

"Again."

"I'm… sorry."

"Wow," she breathed between sips, "Gendo Ikari. Commander of NERV. Arch-arch-architect of humanity's survival - apologizing to _me_."

She gulped down her cup. "Why do you care about me, anyways? You d-don't need me for any of this."

Gendo set down his own plastic cup that he'd been clutching at in his lap. "No, you're wrong. I do need you. I was... wrong to treat you as I did in the past."

"Wrong?" She laughed bitterly. "You used me. You used my mother!"

"Yes." What else could he say? He stared into the empty cup.

Time passed uncomfortably.

"And you still want me?" she asked quietly, the falling water almost drowning out her question.

He looked into her eyes: "Yes."

"You're attracted to me?"

He laughed ruefully. "Ever since I saw you in that little college number you used to wear when you were doing your post-doc, the grey one with the skirt." Oh, he had definitely drunk far too much.

"Seriously?" she leaned forward. "It was boring, prudish, even!"

He shrugged, "What can I say? I have a *hic* thing for academics." He pointed at her hair, "Honestly? I liked your original coloring, though."

She took that in, reaching instinctively up to fluff her hair a bit, thinking about what he said. A return to the topic at hand was due.

"I'm going to kill Casper," she said defiantly. The less Gendo thought about her _mother_ , the better. It was why she had dyed her hair in the _first place_.

Gendo looked at her evenly, "Go right ahead."

"And... you're planning to assassinate the members of SEELE?"

"Yes."

"But... Lily just explained to us that they're effectively immortal."

He nodded again, then reached out his palm, and with a bit of concentration created a small ball composed of overlapping hexagons. Ritsuko stared, enraptured by the mini-A.T. field, as he morphed it into a small spike, a flat card, and back to a ball before dismissing it.

"Fuck me," she breathed out.

"It has to be done, we'll find a way."

"No, Gendo," she said, crawling forward, "I meant: Fuck. _Me_."

She climbed on top of him, his eyes traveling along her curves until they arrived at her sultry face. Her hands slipped up along his face and gently lifted his glasses up - she set them aside on the white tiles.

"You'll... look at me?" she carefully confirmed, searching his eyes for any deception.

His arms were already wrapping around her as they overbalanced and fell backwards into the shower, knocking over the bottles and soaking their remaining clothes in vodka and cranberry juice. In the rush of water she laid on top of him as he mouthed the words she had longed to hear.

All was right with the world.


	11. Chapter 11

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 11**

 _ **Weaving A Story.**_

 **2015 A.D., Pilot Corp Apartments**

"*Wark*," the absolutely real, definitely-not-a-hallucination _penguin_ barked at Shinji.

The young man stood frozen in front of the open door, staring down at the red-crested, black and white creature attempting to exit what he had previously been confident, based on the sign on the apartment door emblazoned "Ikari, Shinji", was _his_ bathroom.

"Ah." Shinji said intelligently.

The penguin eyed him impatiently, then leaned a bit to its right and indicated with his beak that it had somewhere else to be. Before Shinji could even think of moving aside the penguin's body was enveloped by a rhythmic shake of feathers from top to bottom, spraying a fine mist of water droplets onto Shinji's pants.

"*Wark?*" A flipper raised up to break the communications stalemate, "*Wark.*"

Shinji, his brain finally snapping into gear, took a step to his right and let the penguin by. It held a sort of indignant air and was completely non-apologetic - a scion of aquatic royalty to Shinji's impertinent peon...ness.

The young man noted the strange, metallic looking backpack - no wait, it looked like it was something that was actually embedded into the penguin's body - as it walked past and opened the apartment door, waddling through the common room. Shinji was still staring as it made its way to the strange looking refrigerator in the corner at the far side of the room and disappeared inside a sliding door that opened into… what looked like a smaller version of his own apartment.

Was that a recliner? A reading lamp? The small door slid shut just as the penguin within gave Shinji what he could only guess was an exasperated sigh.

Looking down he noted the soggy towel abandoned on the bathroom tiles at his feet. A trail of claw shaped watery marks led from the inner shower stall to the boundary of the bathroom door.

"Whatever," he mumbled softly to himself, stepping inside to take a well deserved shower, "This isn't even the third weirdest thing to happen to me today."

* * *

 **2015 A.D., Bethany Base**

Mari Makinami Illustrious wasn't dead yet, and that was something, she thought to herself as she hummed a lyricless tune from her favorite gameshow.

The blue-eyed teenager was Eva-05's provisional pilot and current pride of the British SAS. A little thing like Second Impact wasn't about to end the storied history and power of one of the world's oldest empires.

No. Not the implacable British.

The Special Air Services had actually contracted their best spies out to nation after nation, weaving themselves into the academia and socio-political landscapes of nations so otherwise concentrated on rebuilding themselves amidst the hellish aftermath of their brief Armageddon that they didn't (largely) notice the politely mannered infiltration by agents of the small, island nation that once ruled the world.

Mari's mother (would you call her a mother?) had made it quite clear in her notes about Yui Ikari that the fate of humanity might quite literally be in her daughter's (is that even the right word?) hands.

Oh well. When you have a job to do the job has to get done. Mother had figured out a way and daughter would execute the plan.

Hence why, at the moment, she was currently shivering in a cold-water tank as part of her Eva combat training. Given the very living, _captive,_ eldritch horror contained deeper in the depths of Bethany Base she could understand why they were pushing her a bit further than, say, the Second Child.

"Thirty more seconds," a crackling voice announced through an underwater speaker.

She had been dropped 10 meters from a metal plank into the freezing water as a shock-and-endurance test about nine and a half minutes ago. She was resting in the dead man's position: bent over, conserving energy, and kicking up at intervals to breathe.

Her blue-tinged lips were a small price to pay to complete her mission.

She began humming the Jeopardy quiz theme again - a tune exactly thirty seconds long - for the twentieth and last time.

Maybe one of her handler's would show up soon? The Japanese one was quite a dish, she thought. Fit. Smart. Deadly. Attractive stubble.

She could definitely swing his way.

Even if he did smell depressingly normal.

* * *

 **2015 A.D., Pilot Corp Apartments**

Lily was sitting on the edge of a large, western style bed as Misato paced in front of her trying and failing to start a conversation about proper human etiquette; each false start ended in a sharp click of her teeth as she clamped down on her usual motor-mouth.

It was incredibly gratifying to know that Lily's passive A.T. Field was completely disrupting or frying the spying bugs and sensors that were arrayed around the new apartment. It was inversely horrifying (and utterly embarrassing) to know that government spooks had been watching and listening to Misato the entire time she had lived in her old apartment.

Pushing aside thoughts of vengeance on the anonymous creeps lurking in surveillance vans she finally settled on a line of attack for her most pressing problem.

"Lily, I know we didn't have long to talk on the way back up from Terminal Dogma, but we need you to act…"

"Human?" Lily interrupted just as Misato herself said: "Normal."

"Yes, right, like a normal human. The commander's idea about you being a hikokimori was pretty good, though. We need to stick with that." Misato looked behind her and opened a dresser one drawer at a time, looking for an extra blanket.

Lily watched her faux-big sister searching for the necessary props to complete her disguise and idly kicked her legs up and down against the bed frame, enjoying the physical sensation: was this joy?

"Am I having fun?" the imitation human asked in an impossibly cute, teenage girl's voice.

Misato, currently at drawer number two - she had realized with creeping horror that some nameless NERV moving crew member must've had to handle her lingerie during the rapid two-hour move-out/move-in timeframe - looked back over her shoulder and saw Lily's legs bouncing to and fro while her head was tilted down in a look of studious concentration.

"Yeahhh… I guess?" Misato tried to confirm, turning back to drawer number three and pulling out a folded, satin sheet: it would have to do for now.

Lily looked up just as Misato draped the sheet around her shoulders. She noted the sudden envelope of cold air that was slowly rising in temperature against her skin.

"This is a pleasant sensation," she remarked.

Misato nodded, "Yes, I mean, this must be so weird for you, right? Being human, I mean, wearing a human body?"

Her teenage doppelgänger wrapped the sheet around herself with her arms crossed underneath, staring up at the fumbling captain as she tripped over her words.

"Ahaha, I mean, yeah, you know? Being, um, a goddess and all and," but Misato was cut off by her new charge.

"As I told Commander Fuyutsuki, I am not your god," the girl stated flatly. Her expression has morphed from curiosity to implacable stone.

"No no, no I know!" Misato backpedaled furiously, holding her hands out in front of her disarmingly, but then a flash of resolve struck her. "No, wait, listen. We're thankful for your help but you have to act as normally as possible around others, like Shinji! He's going to be living with us, he's going to catch on pretty damn quick if you show off your alien knowledge to him!"

"I'm not an alien. I'm your [mother/designer]."

Misato pinched the bridge of her nose. "That, that right there! The thing you did where you put a thought or feeling directly into my head without using a real word! _That's_ what you can't do!"

Lily looked up at Misato with her face slowly scrunching up in honest confusion. "Do you mean humans _can't_ use telepathy _at all_?"

Misato's face faulted into an expression of pure astonishment: "No! We, we just… talk!"

The teenager's eyes almost crossed as she parsed this tidbit of information.

"So… you vocalize with the meat flaps in your throat, but that's it?" Lily considered this. "This communication technique is reliant on air molecules for the vibrations to pass through. How do you communicate in vacuum?"

"Vacuum is... deadly to humans."

"Ah." Lily was unimpressed. "That seems like an unnecessary design flaw."

" _You_ designed us!"

Lily shrugged and kicked her legs up and down, resuming her earlier experimentation. "In my defense, I had an accelerated… education - as you saw in my memories. It seems I have much more to learn."

"That's why Commander Ikari placed you with me," Misato agreed, laughing nervously, "I'm the most normal of the bunch of us."

"I see. You are the most normal. You were certainly the least damaged of them."

Before Misato could ask what she meant Lily had moved on: "What exactly was abnormal about my interactions with the younger Mr. Ikari?"

Misato breathed out, glad at last to have gotten Lily's attention focused on the matter at hand. She began counting off on her fingers, "Okay, first, you can't invade someone's personal space like that without being invited."

"Acknowledged."

"Two: don't smell someone's armpit, like, ever, and especially don't announce your guesstimate of how long it's been since they cleaned themselves!"

Lily nodded solemnly: "It had been a long time, based on the average body odor of the other humans I sampled en route to this apartment."

Misato just kept going. "Three, don't announce your conclusions about what someone may or may not be doing as far as looking at your body or clothes. Some guys just like to look, calling them out is weird. Even if they're being rude. It's not right on their part," she waved a finger in reminder, "But we're trying to fit in."

"I was simply curious about why his eyes kept moving beneath my waistline." She looked down and opened up the sheet, looking at her lap, "There is a lot of biological activity occurring in that area," she mused.

"And we'll discuss that," Misato assured, waving off a much, much longer educational moment, "Number four! Number four, oh, right. Don't show your underwear to others on purpose."

"But the 'skirt' is obviously _designed_ to display them at random intervals," the smaller girl huffed. "This is becoming complicated. Do you have any instruction manuals or guides on how to properly portray being human? I absorb information quickly."

"No! There's only…" Misato trailed off, a genius idea forming in her head, "Wait, say, do you know what T.V. is?"

Lily shook her head in a good imitation of a confused but curious teenage girl.

"What is this T.V. you speak of?"

* * *

 **2015 A.D. Kiel Estate, Germany**

Kaworu Nagisa, amateur pianist and part-time consultant to the world's deadliest secret society, was enjoying an apple under a tree on the old man's estate.

The sky was lit in oranges and purples. A smattering of small clouds stretched beneath the dark leaves of the apple tree down to the horizon.

"We seek information on Ikari's deviation from the Dead Sea Scrolls."

A piece of fruit crunched in the hybrid-human's teeth before he answered in a musical lilt, "So you've said."

He took another bite. Then another.

Chairman Kiel, standing behind the grey-haired Angel, leaned on a wooden staff he had chosen for his sojourn to the grounds outside the enormous manor, the whine of electrical gearing accenting the tilt of his artificial spine.

Just before he raised his voice at the impertinent _slave_ that SEELE had managed to mold the Angelic hybrid into, the chewing stopped.

"Did you know, _sir_ , that apples, in their natural state, have a revolting flavor?"

The young man placed his erstwhile meal on the ground. "That, in fact, you - _lilin_ \- search out the one-in-a-thousand, one-in-ten-thousand even, pleasant tasting apples, and, having found one such among the countless others they deem unacceptable, take that one, particular tree, and _cut off its branches?_ "

Kiel was used to the rambling nature of the young Angel's introspection, and said nothing.

" _Lilin_ , no, humans, take those branches, and cut _wounds_ into other apple trees, those less desirable, and graft the so-called good branches onto them?"

A moment passed.

"It's a good parable, I should think," the Angel mused.

"Boy." The old man addressed SEELE's pet Angel with a weathered sneer, "I wrote the dogma such parables were made to illustrate. I'm here about the Scrolls, you foolish child. It is imperative that the Red Path be followed, for your sake as well as ours." The old voice ground to a halt, failing to fool the enlightened younger man below.

Still, Tabris, as the Scrolls had named him, knew his place; he would play the part, for now.

He sighed, feigning bored exasperation. "Ikari's exposure to the Gates is of no consequence. As you surmise, once his son is placed inside the Evangelion it will irrevocably bond to him. Our plans are unchanged, I will be reunited with the All-Father and all will be well. You will have your reward."

The old man breathed out in relief. Millenia of planning had threatened to be derailed and no matter how calm he had appeared to be in front of his brethren: Gendo Ikari had unnerved him.

Tabris' continued cooperation in the development of the Dummy System was their ultimate trump card.

Gendo Ikari would not be the winner of their little game.

* * *

 **2015 A.D., Pilot Corp Apartments**

When a much cleaner Shinji exited his apartment an hour later he entered a scene matching, more or less, exactly what his incredibly weird day so far had led him to predict might occur.

The common room's lighting was slightly dimmed compared to his apartment's, and Misato was splayed out on a recliner in a tank top and cutoff shorts similar to what she'd been wearing in her "incentive photo."

But his hormones could wait. There, on the couch, was a blanket-ensconced mini-Misato wearing pink pajamas with a penguin in her lap.

They were all glued to the large screen and Misato's little sister was enraptured, wide-eyed even, in whatever she was watching.

Shinji walked in an arc around the center depression in the room so he could see what was on the T.V.,

Just as he came around to where he could join Lily and the penguin on the couch the pitch of the television's volume changed to that of a commercial trying to sell them on a household cleaner.

Misato's eyes left the bald, yellow cartoon head of _Miisuta Suparuku_ and flitted over to him instead, "Oh, hey, Shinji! I want to you to meet PenPen!" She waved at the penguin in Lily's lap.

Lily distractedly grabbed a flipper and waved it at Shinji without breaking eye-contact with the dancing colors on the screen, but if PenPen was annoyed at being puppeted he didn't show it.

"*Wark.*"

"We've, uh, met," Shinji offered, sitting down on the far side of the couch.

"He's a warm water penguin and my oldest roommate," Misato explained. "I rescued him from a lab a while back."

"Oh." What could Shinji say? "What are you, um, watching?"

" _Dear Sister_ ," Lily instantly responded, "A tale of two sisters separated by time and familial relationships set in a modern work environment. It is very educational."

"The… soap opera?" Shinji timidly asked.

"*Wark,*" PenPen affirmed. Then his beak twisted back towards Lily, "*Wark? Worble-Wark?*"

She instantly petted his crest and responded, "Yes, the penguin-ways are simpler."

Misato seemed vaguely impressed by Lily's pan-species linguistic discernment ability. "Does he want a beer?"

PenPen looked over at Misato as though she had grown two heads.

"*Wark!*"

"He thought you would never ask."

Misato got up and placed an open Yebisu in the penguin's claws just as the show got started again. Shinji simply took it all in, unable, or simply unwilling, to allow himself to be overwhelmed by the sheer weirdness surrounding him.

He idly wondered if he had actually been crushed by the giant angel's foot and was simply hallucinating his last moments. Then he remembered his father, injured, laying in a hospital bed for an entire night, and let those thoughts go.

Normalcy reasserted itself naturally, however, as the strange assemblage fell into watching the soap opera together. Shinji found himself more involved in the intricate plot line than he expected to be, considering the distracting pair next to him on the other side of the couch.

"Why does the bigger one not simply take what is rightfully hers?" Lily asked her lap-bound companion.

"*Wark.*"

"Oh. And the supervisor? Why does he not simply state his intentions clearly?"

"*Wark. Wa-ark.*"

"That feels very contrived."

PenPen simply waved a flipper dismissively as Misato glanced at them out of the corner of her eye and smartly resigned herself to a third can of beer.

This pattern continued for some time until, following the end of a commercial for feminine products, Lily's eyes left the screen and found Misato's.

"Misato. There is an error in the information just presented."

The slightly buzzed 'big-sister' should've known better, but asked anyways: "Huh?"

"Human blood is red, why was the cotton-based absorption pad full of blue liquid? Further, what exactly is this… menstruation?"

"*Wark, worble, Wark.*" A flipper suddenly rotated as though it helped the explanation while Lily began gazing downwards at her own body in creeping horror.

"What." She said, darkly.

And just like that Shinji's strange night came to a conclusion as Misato rocketed up from her chair, splashing herself with a mouthful's worth of Yebisu, and declared, loudly: "Okay! Good night, Shinji! Lily, time for bed!"

* * *

 **2015 A.D. Commander Ikari's Apartment**

Gendo Ikari's eyes shot open, his head was pounding and his thinking slurred by the back-to-back drinking and sex. Next to him the bundled up form of Ritsuko stirred unhappily at his sudden movements.

"What?" She asked groggily.

"I just had… it was, hmm." He had lost the train of thought that had managed to awaken him in the middle of the night.

Ritsuko's left arm fell over and thwapped him on the chest.

"Just… go back to... sleep." And she was already out again.

He stared at the once-again-familiar ceiling until his eyes were heavy enough to close by themselves, overpowering the burgeoning hangover that had threatened to keep him awake.

"I'm forgetting something," he mouthed to himself quietly. Well, there was nothing to be done. They had worn each other out and were both exhausted. Best that they sleep, and recover.

It had been an eternity since he had enjoyed all the pleasures that the physical world had to offer. Not to worry, though, as Ritsuko had made certain that the time-and-dimensionally-displaced man was in perfectly good, working order.

She had particularly appreciated a few of the A.T. Field assisted tricks he had wanted to try.

He smiled contentedly to himself. Time passed and just as he began drifting off to sleep the thing that had been pecking at the edges of his dreams came into crystal clear focus.

 _Oh, shit._

 _Rei._


	12. Chapter 12

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 12**

 _ **Memento Mari.**_

 **1998 A.D., Kyoto University**

Mari Makinami, age 16, stepped into Metaphysical Biology Lab 1 and quietly closed the door behind her. Yui Ikari, campus prodigy and Mari's assigned mentor, was splayed across a desk with her head lolling atop an open notebook as a rivulet of drool made its way onto her short hair, slowly seeping towards the inked letters on the crisp paper.

The soft squeaks of laboratory test rats in their containers, combined with the forced air cooling venting into the room, provided a sort of white noise that had no doubt lulled her irresponsible mentor to sleep - either that or just another late night with Rokubungi.

Mari didn't set down her own bag for a moment, entranced by the older woman's sleeping beauty, before she finally stepped closer, her long sheet of hair swishing behind her. Yui's mouth, despite being slightly open, had an upturned smile on it. She looked happy.

 _How annoying_.

Mari reached over and pinched Ikari's cheek, checking to see just how asleep she really was. Besides a minor twitch and sleepy grumble she received no further reaction. Letting her hand trace downwards her fingers fell on the small, thin-framed glasses Yui had left on the desk next to her, and silently she snatched them away. Before Mari was even conscious of what she had done she had zipped her bag closed again, having stealthily stolen away Yui's glasses in what she was now realizing was a fit of impetuous pique.

Before she could reconsider her actions the door opened and the blonde-haired visage of her co-researcher stepped in. She was a foreign student who had placed into top honors just like she and Yui had, but was the proper age for a college student compared to Mari, who had skipped several grades.

"Mari, hey, the President's office is calling for you," she said.

Mari nodded, "Oh, okay. Thanks Alice." She walked out of the room behind the blonde, wondering what the President of the university could possibly want with her that was so important it hadn't passed through Professor Fuyutsuki first.

Yui, for her part, woke up a few moments later, and yawned loudly in a bit of a daze.

A moment passed as she stretched out her fingers blindly, then she sat up in her chair, scrambling.

"Wha… where did I… put my glasses?"

* * *

A few hours later Mari considered the events of the day as she sat on a bench with her fellow research students. The wooden slats were warming the bottom of her legs thanks to her jean shorts, and she idly wondered how the other two girls could possibly enjoy wearing lab coats outdoors in the summer heat.

"Oh, darn it! I wanted the orange juice!" Yui exclaimed directly after the clink of a can hitting the bottom of a vending machine tray could be heard. She had obviously pressed the wrong button.

Alice looked exasperated. "Are you still looking for your glasses?"

Mari's gaze shifted to the side. The President had offered her a position with an overseas research team working on a merger of classical biology and metabiological physics. Saint Ford University in England: far from home, but incredibly prestigious.

She had questioned why Yui Ikari, the more obvious choice given her incredible potential, had not been offered the chance first. The President had simply shrugged and explained the Japanese government had already snapped her up for their own special project.

 _Of course they had._

"Hey, you guys, you really haven't seen them anywhere?" Yui's question pierced Mari's thoughts.

"How would I know?" she responded with audible annoyance, "Geez. You should get contacts already. Like me. You're wasting your good looks wearing those dumb things."

Before Yui could make a decent comeback Alice changed the topic of discussion: "Yui, forget it. Say, did you even know half the guys around here are acting all let down? They're moping up a storm." She took a drag of her cigarette and made eye contact with Yui, "All 'cause the great Yui Ikari decided on dating Gendo Rokubungi instead of the _far_ more eligible bachelors?"

Yui's face turned into one giant, wistful smile, "But... but Gendo is just, _so_ _cool_."

Alice avoided facepalming herself with her cigarette while Mari's expression went from annoyed neutrality to visible disgust.

"Ew. You're literally the only one who thinks that," Alice rejoined, being used to Yui's eccentricities, not that it stopped the blonde student from waving her cigarette around while she kept on listing the faults of Yui's new boyfriend.

"I mean, you have to admit he's out there. And gloomy. You can't ever tell what he's actually thinking." She took another drag. " _Shifty!_ That's the word. He's shifty."

Mari's eyes narrowed as she listened, but Yui only turned thoughtful.

"Yeah, everyone says that… but he's not, he's not like that at all."

Mari was glad that Alice had taken the lead on this. Maybe she could unravel the _enigma_ of Yui Ikari just a bit more than she'd managed to so far - anything to give Mari an advantage in the long-game.

"Like the first time we met," Yui began her story, "It was in the cafeteria and he was in front of me in line. He said, 'I'll take the B meal', and you guys _know_ I love the B meal on Tuesdays, so I said I'd have that too! But the cafeteria server told me that Gendo had gotten the last one and I was like, 'Oh no!'"

She laughed to herself, remembering the exchange. "I stared at him with my most hopeful look on my face and he just… turned around and started to walk away. I was still holding the A meal they'd given me and was all disappointed when suddenly he turned around, set down his tray, and offered to trade."

Yui was lost in her story as Alice feigned interest in Gendo Rokubungi's unexpected show of chivalry.

"So then I said we should eat together, and he said 'No, I prefer to eat by myself,' but I wasn't having any of that. So yeah, we sat together and talked, and talked, and he smiled for me - it was so cute!" She was gushing now.

"Ughhh, I don't want to hear all these sappy details," Mari said, standing up suddenly, "I'm going to class." She gave them a huff and a wave, then set off down the walkway.

"Whoa," Alice said, looking over at the retreating figure, "God she needs to get laid. Hey, Yui?" she changed the topic again, keenly aware of why Mari might have reacted the way she did given the ardent stares she'd caught the young girl giving their older mentor over the semester.

"Yeah?"

"You did way better than Mari and I did on that last project for Professor Fuyutsuki. Doesn't it get, what's the word? Frustrating or something? Always being the one at the top? Always getting your way?"

Yui hmmed to herself, "I guess sometimes no matter how hard you try there's always someone else who's going to win, right? You know? No one's fault!" She laughed playfully.

Neither Yui or Alice would know that Yui's words had coincided in timing with Mari, having made her way indoors, walking right by that smug son-of-a-bitch Gendo _fucking_ Rokubungi.

* * *

"Crap!" Mari said to herself, standing in front of Professor Fuyutsuki's lab. She was mentally berating herself for spending the last week slacking off too much and forgetting to hand in the report that was due the day before.

She knocked on the door and heard a muffled response when suddenly a loud crash sounded from the other side, followed by a bunch of clattering sounds and a burst of high-pitched squeaks. Mari rushed through the door to come upon the scene of Yui Ikari, bent over on her knees with her derriere in the air, surrounded by a litter of running rats, strewn about straw, and tipped over containers.

"Oh my god! Yui, what'd you do?!" she exclaimed, still standing there in shock as Yui turned her head around, pushing herself from her prone position and onto her legs.

"I was trying…" she sounded completely embarassed, "To get some documents off the shelf, and I couldn't reach, so I got on a chair, but the chair had wheels, and I slipped and fell right onto the cages and," but Yui's stream of conscious retelling was interrupted by the determined Mari.

"Fine, all right already, just come on and help me catch them!"

What ensued was a fifteen minute chase around the room culminating in the last rodent escapee making a valiant leap for freedom from the top of Yui's head and directly onto Mari's face. But Mari needn't have worried, as Yui immediately slammed a shopping bag down over her head, catching the poor thing at last.

The only side effect, of course, being that Mari was sent sprawling onto the ground, coincidentally knocking her own bag open.

"Oh thank god, we got them all back in their cages," Yui said, ignoring the undignified position she had left Mari in, as she finished shutting the last cage.

"Ow, ow, my contact slipped," Mari said, trying to find the errant thing sliding across her eyeball, and there it went, falling out as she involuntarily blinked, flitting to the dirty floor. "Ow, no, dammit!"

Yui turned around, only to see Mari's bag splayed open on the ground, its contents spilled out onto the floor.

Mari followed her line of sight, dreading the next few seconds in growing horror as both of the women stared at Yui's glasses, half-fallen out of Mari's bag. The glasses Yui had been hunting for _for weeks_ , thinking she had just lost them - the ones Mari had snatched.

"Wha… Mari, are those, those are my glasses!" she said in shock, staring at the proof of Mari's weeks old act of theft. "I had so much trouble getting around without them, why, why did you…?"

"Because you're… so annoying!" Mari said sharply, staring right into her mentor's eyes, those beautiful eyes, "Everything you do is perfect. You're the best - at everything! And you're pretty, and cute, and brilliant, and sweet, and you're so impossible and it's just too much!"

Yui slumped forward, having realized this had probably been a long time coming.

"And even though you knew how I felt," Mari accused her, "You didn't return any of it! You **_know_** I have feelings for you and you've never even said a _word to me_ about it."

Yui shifted uncomfortably, unsure of what to say to the younger girl, who was looking up at her with undisguised jealousy and need.

"I just wanted…" Mari said, sending two hands up into her long unkempt hair, now completely tangled by Yui's rodent chasing antics, "I, you…"

This time it was Yui who interrupted calmly. "Mari," she said in a soothing voice, "Here, sit. I'll fix… your hair." Mari couldn't do anything but nod, letting Yui take the lead as her mentor fetched a comb from her desk drawer.

It was quiet, all of sudden, less the background noise of air conditioning and small animals scurrying within their small plastic homes.

Mari sat like that, losing track of time, as Yui combed out the tangles in her long, lustrous hair. Not talking. Just feeling. Finally Mari gathered up her courage again.

"I'm sorry for saying… that stuff," Mari offered quietly. "I'm just... I'm leaving next month, to England, I'll be studying there."

"I know." Yui stopped combing and slid her hand around the long, flowing hair at the nape of Mari's neck, considering whether to make a ponytail out of it. "If you wanted my glasses - hey, I'll give them to you, Mari."

She let go of her hair and took up the rounded frames, placing them over Mari's eyes. "Although, I don't think they're the right prescription for you."

It was true, one of Mari's eyes now had an intense blur caused by doubled strength where the one contact hadn't fallen out, and her other eye, not having the contact that had eventually fallen out after the scuffle, wasn't quite right either.

But it felt… nice. That Yui would offer up a nice gesture like that for her.

Yui's hands had moved back to Mari's hair and were pulling two long bundles apart. The older woman dipped down back towards her bag and came back up with something in her hand, rubber bands, it turned out, and was happily tying Mari's hair into long twintails arrayed behind her head.

Abruptly the hairstyling ceased and Yui bent down to fetch one last thing: a hand-mirror. She placed it directly in front of Mari's face so she could evaluate the handiwork.

Yui giggled softly, "All done. You look so cute! Like a school girl."

Mari sighed, "Of course I look like a schoolgirl… I'm 16." She stared forward at the powered-off computer monitor in front of her, barely able to catch Yui's smiling face in the reflection of the black screen.

She sighed. "Yui… I'll... I hope you and Gendo will be happy."

Then Yui's cheery smile deepened to something more real.

"Thank you, Ms. Makinami. I'm sure we will be."

* * *

 **2000 A.D., AEL Adjunct Facility - London, U.K.**

Mari Makinami at age 18 was now a leading authority on adaptational genetics and human cloning. Having arrived in the United Kingdom only two years ago she had been surprised to discover that her so-called study-abroad program had, in fact, been a front for the Artificial Evolution Laboratory and Gehirn, a shadowy government-backed organization tasked with cloning human tissue.

 _And other things_.

Her exposure to the quantum-DNA scavenged from some unknown - _alien_ \- source had at once shaken her worldview and affirmed it: all those years spent in metabiology had paid off, and _how_.

She had spent her first year working in the academic lab with her colleagues: a fellow Japanese, some British, and one American. Together they had created a plethora of new methods for the decomposition and analysis of what they were calling "qDNA" in the literature - not that their findings were being published to the general academic community.

No, the heavily armed men and women that shadowed the scientists' every movement made sure of that.

 _So much for peer review_ , she thought darkly.

Mari was just finishing her latest report on the successful cloning of baseline human neurons, including enhanced myelin sheaths, for the new Project-E initiative. And who else was reading and approving her reports, but _Yui Ikari_ , her erstwhile crush and now happily married chief scientist at Gehirn's secretive administration branch back at Matsushiro.

Mari, on the other hand, had taken strongly to her fresh new start overseas, having switched away from contacts to glasses (with the correct prescription) f and wearing her hair in the twintail style Yui had tried out on her. Maybe she couldn't have her old mentor, but she had kept a few token of Yui's affection.

So distracted was she by her interactions with her old mentor that it had taken some time for Mari to realize that she was, for all intents and purposes, a _prisoner_. Sure, she could "resign" from her position, but considering that the last member of the team who had submitted a letter of departure had conveniently been found dead in their garage with the car running the next morning, well, it didn't take much to put two and two together when all traces of their resignation letter disappeared from the computer systems.

And, true to form, Yui hadn't been bothered by this in the least, even when Mari had brought it up the 'unfortunate suicide' in a circumspect way over an encrypted voice-chat.

"Our work is very important, Mari. The fate of the world is at stake. So don't do anything rash."

Mari hadn't done anything rash. She just kept writing reports, day in and day out.

Speaking of reports, just as Mari was about to hit the submit key and send off her summary email to the private distribution list (all under Heavy Top Secret classification), a pinging sound erupted from her speaker and a small red badge popped up.

Fucking Naoko Akagi, _again_.

Every single week the inane woman sent out a completely useless "progress update" about her designs and theoretical work on the MAGI supercomputer system. The small, barely-there updates were all a gamesmanship move meant to demonstrate to those in charge how important she and her work were.

And she _always_ timed them somehow right before Mari submitted her own genetics reports.

"That bitch!" she huffed, quite out loud. Akagi was constantly stealing her thunder. And she'd had a _really_ interesting set of findings this time. God damn it!

Thankfully the office was mostly dark: it was 11:00 PM, no one was there. So why the hell was Akagi typing up emails so early in the Japanese morning, nine hours ahead? This had to be purposeful.

Mari twisted open her thermos and poured a steaming cup of tea into her cup, swirling it around as she breathed on it to cool it off a bit. Her annoyance had turned to a minor sort of cold anger, and as she sipped her Earl Grey she had an idea.

Setting down the cup her fingers began flying over the keys, years of misspent youth coming to the fore as she crafted a special message to Akagi congratulating her on her latest "breakthroughs."

And Naoko, god bless her withered soul, fell for it hook, line, and _sinker_. She opened up the cutesy attachment that Mari had just sent her, an e-card hiding a custom little phishing attack vector, and now Mari had unfettered remote access to the computer scientist's desktop from an entire continent away.

 _Take that!_ Mari triumphantly hummed to herself as she spun victoriously in her chair. With a few keystrokes she began downloading, in careful chunks, compressed and encrypted text data from core administration staff at headquarters.

As long as she kept the datastream small enough and didn't try to download any larger binaries or videos, the watchdog ICE programs shouldn't catch on to what she was up to. After all, they were actually on the same virtual private network; the intrusion countermeasure routines were designed to handle external threats.

Mari gave it about ten minutes before she slowed down the request rate and then started staggering it into chunks, hoping to emulate the normal ebb and flo of TCP/IP packets to mask her activities.

Finally done, she began reading the mess of emails, notes, and project plans that she had illicitly acquired, careful to copy them over by serial cable to her own air-gapped laptop first. _No network card, no problems_ , she assured herself.

The hour stretched on to 11 PM, then midnight, then 2 AM, then 6, then 7.

The tea was long gone by the time a visibly shaking Mari pushed her laptop off of now crumbled pants and onto the concrete floor, still mindful to set the disk encryption back on before shutting the lid and letting it power down.

And she sat there, huddled in the corner of the room, just as the early morning light of dawn began to break through the windows and illuminate the fog outside, trying to come to grips with everything she had discovered.

It was there, on that unremarkable day just a few scant weeks before Second Impact, that Mari Makinami decided that Yui Ikari was going to die.

She had some calls to make.

* * *

 **2015 A.D., +2 Days After Sachiel**

 **Gendo Ikari's Apartment, 7:00 A.M.**

Gendo Ikari was staring at himself in his bathroom mirror, sans his trademark orange-tinted glasses, while holding a very neglected razor in his hand. Ritsuko was showering in the stall next to him, the steam fogging up the top of the mirror.

No matter how hungover the two of them might've been they couldn't escape the expectations put upon NERV command staff, particularly for Ritsuko, who had direct reports like Maya Ibuki to deal with in Central Dogma.

In other words, no amount of alcohol was going to keep them from doing their jobs. How had Ritsuko put it? _If Misato can do it, you bet your ass **we** can!_ Gendo thought that Ritsuko might be underestimating Captain Katsuragi's tolerance for alcohol, but it didn't matter. They had work to do.

The sound of water abruptly cut off.

"Towel?" Ritsuko called out, poking her head out from behind a shower curtain. She was being curiously modest after the previous night's festivities, but Gendo had always felt that women were an absolute enigma anyways and he had best not comment. During his time in Instrumentality he had tried to pay some amount of attention to the differences between the fairer sex and his own, after all.

Besides, the last thing Gendo needed was for the ghost of a post-Third Impact Mari Makinami Illustrious to come and haunt him, because _that would be something she would do_. Even if it were impossible. "Impossible" was her _favorite_.

He put down the razor, having thought better of de-bearding himself, and handed Ritsuko a towel. The mass of dripping blonde-hair whisked back into the shower stall as she began toweling herself off.

Gendo, meanwhile, began making a checklist in his head of all the things he needed to address before the main timeline asserted itself and Shamshel appeared.

 _Talk to Rei_.

 _And Shinji._

 _Get Soryu on board._

 _Deal with Kaji._

 _Get ahold of Mari._

 _Steal Adam._

 _Tabris?_

On the counter the phone buzzed, a small text message scrolling over a tiny screen like an old pager.

"What's that?" Ritsuko asked, stepping out of the stall.

Gendo turned towards her, holding up the phone: "Rei is awake."


	13. Chapter 13

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 13**

 _ **Let Me Play Beneath the Stars.**_

 **2015 A.D., NERV HQ, Primary Hospital Ward**

Gendo stepped into the poorly lit hospital room and pushed the dimmer switch upwards as he passed the wall, brightening the room so he could get a clearer look at the patient breathing evenly on the bed.

Rei Ayanami.

Rei II. The First Child.

The unbidden vision of a child's mangled throat and bulging eyes - eyes locked in hurt and confusion and betrayal - erupted from the depths of his former self's memory. Her first death had been so cruel. He could've found another way, but it had been... expedient. She had been a tool. After all, the completion of the MAGI supercomputers - Naoko Akagi's lifelong work - had lined up perfectly with the need to ensoul Unit-00, and Ritsuko's mother had become _inconvenient_.

Rei had _spares_ , after all.

So he had murdered her. Them. Scientist and Experiment. It hadn't been his own hands wrapped around the little girl's throat but they might as well have been. He had programmed little Rei with hard words and callous disregard for the emotionally fragile Naoko's feelings. No doubt his former lover had been desperately hoping for Gendo's heartfelt praise and recognition of her accomplishments.

She had done the near impossible: given birth to true AI. She had been killing herself for years to please him.

And then… "Old hag."

Little Rei barely even knew what it meant, but the insinuation carried on her words: "It's what Commander Ikari calls you."

The security footage, now written over a hundred times with garbage data before its deletion, had shown the moment that Naoko _broke_.

It was a terrible thing for the Gendo of different time to look across the room upon the crippled child soldier he had created.

Her body was so still - just like the still corpse of little Rei I.

Guilt was a largely alien feeling for the reborn man: he had helped kill billions. Why did he feel so keenly for the manipulation and betrayal of one little clone? He knew why.

Because of what he had _done._ What he had done with the fragmenting A.T. Field that Rei I had left behind.

The soul of Evangelion Unit-00.

An immature, child-like mind trapped forever in an animal - human, yet not.

Gendo shook his head, shivering involuntarily as he continued into the middle of the room while Ritsuko hung back outside the doorway.

Eva Unit-00's pilot lay, bandaged but healing, on the bed, staring straight upwards at the ceiling with her blood red eyes. She hadn't yet noticed it was _him_ and not some interchangeable nurse come to attend to her bodily functions.

"Rei."

Instantly her eyes found him. He was standing not quite close enough to see completely, so she craned her head in a futile attempt to greet him properly. It was obviously painful for her. He moved forward to the bedside so she wouldn't have to bend further.

"Commander!" she welcomed him, happiness lacing her voice, "You came to see me. I am happy."

He was looking down at her and Ritsuko had stepped into the room now, leaning on the wall next to the door. It was difficult for the faux-blonde to deal with her instinctual rival for Gendo's affections. She let Gendo do the talking.

"Rei, how are you?"

Questions for Rei should be kept simple. It had been a long time (from his perspective) since they had interacted but he kept in mind that her conditioning was still rock-solid at this point in the timeline.

Her lips cracked into an earnest smile - so genuine he could barely stand it. Like a broken marionette begging to perform an encore despite its broken strings. So eager to please. To prove itself.

 _Herself_ , he chided internally.

"My healing is proceeding smoothly, Commander Ikari. I have no complaints," she stated. (I have complaints.)

"Is there anything you require?" he asked automatically, a tickle at the back of his mind. His eyes tracing over her face and the large bandage hiding one of her eyes.

"No, sir." (Yes.)

Was there an echo in the room? His eyes unconsciously slid across the room for threats.

Suddenly she coughed, which turned into a painful heaving of her ribs as the contortions wracked her small frame. Ritsuko quickly came into view and helped Gendo as they grabbed Rei's shoulders to press her down as gently as possible, hoping to brace her from hurting herself further.

The fit subsided and they released her. "Rei, I have authorized Dr. Akagi to accelerate your healing using the LCL recovery vats. Doctor?"

But before Ritsuko could say anything Rei asked, "The operation, it was successful?"

"Yes," the two adults answered at the same time, slipping glances at each other.

"I am glad." (I am.)

"Rei," the doctor began, "I will be moving you out of the hospital ward and back to Terminal Dogma." Rei's eyes suddenly clouded and Ritsuko wasn't sure if it was simply the standard animosity that had developed between them in their petty contest for Gendo's attention or concerns about returning to the place of her "birth."

Gendo joined in to assure her, "Only temporarily. The LCL should speed up your recovery to one or two days, then you will return to your assigned duties."

"Thank you." (It is better than suffering.)

"Dr. Akagi will supervise the transfer. I have business to attend to."

"Of course," she coughed gently, he noted the sad note in her voice, "Commander."

Gendo quickly turned on his heel, careful not to allow any slips in his facade as he passed the eavesdropping devices hidden near the door. Behind him he could hear Ritsuko on her phone calling for a nurse and some orderlies.

After thinking it over he stepped back for a moment. "Dr. Akagi, please coordinate breakfast for the First Child, and then be on your way." The words were stiff, mostly for the surveillance cameras.

Ritsuko simply huffed, her hand over the intercom microphone to stifle it, playing at being annoyed. "And where will you be?"

"I think I'll go check in on our newest pilots."

* * *

 **2015 A.D. Pilots Corp Apartment**

Shinji was dreaming, that was the only viable explanation. It was a very vivid dream, he acknowledged to himself, and pinching himself wasn't helping, so it was also a very realistic dream.

However, he knew that having stepped into the kitchen of the shared apartment common area after waking up that morning that there was simply no way that his father, Supreme Commander of NERV, Architect of Giant Robots, Abandoner of Small Children, Wearer of Orange Glasses was sitting calmly at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.

The large sheet of paper folded over and he could make out the front page title: "Tokyo-3 Emergency Earthquake Response Successful."

Wait. The kanji were clear. He read it again as the dream-father shuffled another page.

You can't read in dreams. He'd learned that in school.

"Dad?"

The newspaper drooped as Gendo Ikari looked over the pages at the pajamaed young man who had stepped further into the room.

"Ah, Shinji. Good. Come, have a seat. I made… toast." The older man waved offhandedly at the plates arrayed around the table where, sure enough, there were cuts of lightly burnt bread slathered in long-ago-melted butter.

"Um, hi." Shinji pulled a chair out from the table and sat.

"Good morning."

This was awkward.

Gendo put down the paper, folding it next to his plate. He looked over as Shinji eyed the food suspiciously, then sighed: "Your mother was the chef in the family."

"My mother?" Shinji asked, timid as ever.

"HELLO GENDO IKARI!" an exuberant voice yelled at him from the other side of the room

Father and son's heads twisted in tandem to see Misato's younger sister (as far as Shinji knew) who had triumphantly bounced out of the far bedroom door and took up a position near the couch. The young girl was wearing her hair in a long sheet tapered at the very end with a dark purple ribbon, playing off of the hair's pale lavender hue.

Otherwise she was clothed only in a sheet, who knew what was under it, and he could tell Shinji was warring with the teenage duality of embarrassment and hormones as he stared at the girl who looked exactly like a teenage replica of the older Misato, who had come out of the room at this point as well. She, thankfully, was wearing one of her long dresses - not entirely work appropriate, but the bridge staff never complained.

Gendo nodded politely, "Good morning, Fourth Child. Captain. Did you sleep well?"

"G-good morning, Lily, Misato," Shinji stammered.

Lily collapsed into a sheet-wrapped puddle on the floor, looking up at the table as Misato came up awkwardly behind her, uncertain what to do.

"Yes sir, Commander, uh, thank you for the new accommodations," Misato said.

He waved her gratitude away, "Not at all, this is an experiment."

Lily's eyes seemed to sparkle at the new experience as she felt along the carpet beneath her sheet as she sat on the floor. "I enjoy experiments, Commander Ikari. May I participate?"

This miniature incarnation of Lilith managed to switch between mind-numbingly odd phrases to proper sentence structures fast enough to spin heads, but Gendo noted Misato and Shinji seemed to be taking it all in stride.

"Of course. We will house the entire Evangelion pilot corps here, including the First Child once she has recovered, and the Second Child once she arrives."

"First Child… Second Child?" Shinji had turned back towards his father to ask.

"He means Rei Ayanami and Asuka Soryu," Misato offered, "Rei was the girl who was injured in the initial Eva prototype testing a few weeks ago, and Asuka is at NERV Germany - she's a pilot in the literal sense. Air Force. But she's your age!"

Shinji nodded, caught up in the explanation, "W-wow, I mean, I wouldn't have thought someone my age would be a real pilot, I guess."

"Soryu was chosen as an Evangelion pilot candidate as a child. Her mother helped develop some of the initial interface systems before she passed away," Gendo explained.

"She was?"

Gendo took a bite of his toast and nodded, chewing as he considered what to share with Shinji. So far the group dynamic seemed stable enough, despite the insanity of adding the inhuman creator of humanity - Lily - to their daily lives. He seemed to remember that Misato had run all over Shinji in the previous timeline with chores and cooking duties, even if she came to care about him.

"Yes," he continued at last, "She's an above-average fixed wing fighter pilot, and does reasonably well in the Evangelion simulators. Many of the production model's - Unit 2's - systems were designed based on her experiences. She's very proud of it. Captain, your thoughts on the Second Child?"

Misato looked surprised that Gendo had asked for her opinion, but stepped past Lily to join them at the table, speaking as she sat down.

"Well, Asuka is proud, like the Commander said. A bit bossy, honestly. There's some personal things in her past, what with her…" she trailed off, noticing the discouraging shake of Gendo's head that Shinji missed, "Right, um, she prefers mid-range combat as opposed to long-range or being too up-close and personal. Which, by the way, you might not expect once you meet her. She's very upfront - very _in your face_. If you don't stand up for yourself she won't respect you. I had planned to make her the team leader for deployments, actually."

"Oh." Shinji said, a bit worried. "What about the First Child?"

Misato briefly searched Commander Ikari's face, who simply nodded and grabbed another bite of toast.

"Well, Rei is… different. Very shy. Introverted to an extreme, really. Like, imagine h- my sister," she pointed at Lily, who was talking to PenPen, who had somehow appeared in her lap, "But super quiet. So, a little odd still, right? But toned down. She's definitely a long-range asset. Her scores with the material rifle and sniping in the simulators are all top-notch. A very good soldier, follows orders to a fault."

"I see," Shinji said, staring at his empty plate, "And she was hurt testing an Eva?"

Gendo took this one. "Yes, there was mental contamination in the link between the pilot and the Eva's core. It was supposed to be a simple activation test… you saw how the entry plug works?" he looked to Shinji for confirmation.

"Good. When the systems began failing the entry plug ejected. The designers hadn't considered adding a cut-off if the plug was inside a building, so it crashed into the ceiling until the jets expended their fuel. You can imagine it was not a gentle landing."

"Oh, wow, I-I didn't…" Shinji began stammering but his father cut him off.

"She's recovering. The engineers who failed to account for the situation were reassigned to other duties. On the other hand, Unit-1's activation during the first Angel battle proved the systems work and can defeat the enemy."

Misato had smothered a smirk when Gendo had said "reassigned" - she was pretty sure being shit-canned to one of the Arctic research bases wasn't the resume builder the ejection system engineers had hoped for.

"O-OK, thanks for explaining who the other pilots are, father. How did they, I mean, how were we all chosen?"

Misato stepped in for that one. "Well you see Shinji, the Marduk Institute evaluates candidates all over the world. We have potential candidates everywhere - but they have to be children born after Second Impact, remember?"

"Except father?"

Gendo nodded, "Yes, possibly Captain Katsuragi as well. We were both exposed to the precursor Angel that caused the Second Impact. There were… no other survivors, so the theory is difficult to test, you could say."

Misato looked pained at the reminder of her father's death and Gendo took the silent moment to brush away a few crumbs from his uniform and stand up.

"Thank you for breakfast, Captain, " he said unnecessarily, considering he'd been the one to scrounge up the toast in the first place, "I have other business I must attend to. Shinji, good luck in your synchronization training."

Misato said, "Uh, thank you for dropping by Commander."

"Goodbye Commander Gendo Ikari!" Lily chirped from her position on the floor.

"*wark* *wark*," PenPen said from his position in Lily's sheet cocooned lap.

"Bye… dad," Shinji said, watching his father leave through the door, then he looked over at Misato. "Synchronization training?"

* * *

 **2001 A.D., Scotland, MI5 Hotlabs**

"Synchronization?" the bespeckled spook asked, looking queasily at the empty glass cylinder situated in the center of the room. It was large and filled with liquid - not water, he had gathered, given the orange sheen - and just the right size to fit a person.

"Yes Oliver, _synchronization_. The whole point of this," Mari Makinami pointed to her very visible pregnancy, "Is to make sure everything I know transfers as cleanly as possible."

Oliver, her handler and the lab's resident "proper gentlemen" of the domestic British intelligence services, adjusted the frames of his squared off eyeglasses nervously. It was unlike him to be nervous about anything, but she couldn't exactly expect a perfect James Bond in this day and age. The fact that his team had helped convincingly fake her death and extract her from Gehirn's grasp in one of the blackest operations pulled off in history was at least a testament to how awesome her new team was.

As planned they'd pulled off the "accident" right after the very underestimated Mari Makinami had stolen as much biological research data from Gehirn as possible. Oh, and Dr. Soryu's sync work. That had been important too.

Yui had even cried at her funeral, which would've been touching if Mari hadn't been keenly aware that her old mentor would easily order her and her team's death should SEELE ever bother to order it. She might've been a friend who'd thrown her a baby shower and pestered her, daily, about getting Mari to fess up about who had knocked her up, but she knew Yui would look the other way if two bullets needed to be put into the back of her head.

Mari smiled grimly, thinking how disturbingly fun it was to watch (via videofeed) Yui and Gendo to pay their respects to a cloned corpse of herself, replete with the convincing baby bump, in that little English church. It was like the plot to a bad sci-fi B-movie. Well, that's what happens when you train up a girl as one of the world's leading experts in human genetics, give her a bunch of lab equipment, and then give her a good reason to bail.

Like the end of the world.

Scotland was green year round now. The British Isles had fared mostly well during the events of Second Impact, thankfully. The benefits to being an island with a higher elevation than say, Tuvalu, which was nothing but a few stripped down sandbars now.

Besides, she had done such a convincing enough job attracting the right attention to her cause that she had played no small part in the British being actually prepared for Second Impact, on the sly at least - even if they couldn't stop it.

SEELE might think themselves the masters of their little universe but she'd managed to identify plentiful gaps in their domination of the political sphere. So what if they owned the Prime Minister and a few Lords? Mari was besties with the Queen now. Saving then-Princess Diana's life with the knowledge she'd hacked from SEELE's networks had paid numerous dividends.

Oliver interrupted her thoughts: "Speaking of, who's the father?"

"You are," Mari said, deadpan.

"That's not…" he looked again at all the equipment around him, "Possible?" He was definitely unsure. Anything could happen around Mari.

"Sure it is, I grabbed your DNA from the saliva you left on a coffee cup. Easy peasy."

He sighed, sticking his hands into his trouser pockets. "Please tell me you're joking. You didn't even know me nine months ago. I was in Liverpool."

She leaned back in her chair and rolled her eyes. "Fiiiiinnneeee. There isn't one. A father, I mean."

"No?"

"No. She's a clone. Of me. She's literally _me_. Well, blank slate at the moment," Mari tapped her fingers on the chair's armrest, "Not much going on in that little brain." She rubbed her stomach a bit.

"And the synchronization?"

"Ollie. You're going to be one of two people on the planet who end up knowing the full plan. Can't you let me drag it out a bit?"

"I'd prefer to know earlier. Forewarned is forearmed."

"Oooh, that sounded incredibly sexy. Very spy-like. Say it again," she teased.

"Your dossier lists you as a dedicated lesbian, so no. It'd be lost on you," he stoically teased back.

She giggled, and the baby kicked, hard, right up into the corner of her ribcage, "Argh, bollocks, she's a tough little cookie. Just like mommy." Kicked again, "Fffffff… fine. OK."

He sat down to listen, leaning forward.

"You remember the whole mumbo-jumbo about the 'Marduk Institute'?"

He nodded, "Yes. They find the attributes of suitable pilot candidates for the Evangelion's our nations are developing."

Mari leaned behind her and grabbed a file, tossing it across the gap between their chairs into his lap. "Read this later. Long story short: it's a front, it'll always _be_ a front. The only things a pilot actually needs are to: a) be born after Second Impact, and b) have a link to the resident soul in the Evangelion."

"You're taking the p..., are you, did you say _soul_?"

"Oh I'm sorry darling, did I stutter? Yes, Ollie - soul. Souls are real. Did they not read you into that? Congratulations! There's an afterlife! Maybe? I have no idea. Anyways, souls are real. Wow, I could go down the rabbit hole on this one…" she was getting distracted.

"Look, it's actually all quantum physics and interesting metaphysical framework stuff. Just ignore it. Anyways," she continued, "They'll probably just 'accident' some parents or siblings and transfer their souls to the Evangelion units themselves. That way the 'pilot candidates' will have a synchronization bond with the Evangelion itself. See? Brilliant! What could go wrong?" she asked sarcastically.

Oliver was generally immune to Mari's eccentricities but this was more than he had known to expect. "You're telling me that we just need to keep an eye out for kids with missing parents?"

"Exactly."

"How does that relate to you? What is this synchronization project you've been working on? I'm fairly sure there's over 200 million pounds in this room." He waved around to demonstrate the results of her spending habits.

"Simple, my dear Ollie, simple. I want to pilot an Evangelion and stop SEELE from causing the actual _end of the world_. But I _can't_. Because the meta-genetic changes needed for piloting an Evangelion only work for children born after Second Impact. It's easier to just let a clone of myself do it, after I upload myself into it, of course."

His mouth dropped open in surprise. "This is what Her Majesty signed off on? All this… you're going to… what? Become your own daughter?"

"Yup." She popped the 'p'. "And you're going to take great care of her. Me. Us."

He stared at her. "Bugger me," he said in disbelief.

"No thanks, I don't swing that way. Remember?" She smiled sweetly.

"But your daughter won't have a link, like you said, to an Eva."

"Oh no, Ollie, she'll have even better than that. She'll have whatever portion of my soul is left over, ready to bridge the gap in the Evangelion neural interfaces on-demand. And, I already know all the backdoor commands! We'll be _unstoppable_!"

He dipped his head in acknowledgement, gesturing at her. "That is… impressively well thought out. I suppose, if anyone could do it, it _would_ be our illustrious leader, Dame Mari Makinami."

"Oooh, Illustrious. I like that. Once I'm gone, name her that!"

"I'm sorry?"

"Mari Makinami Illustrious. I love it. Betcha five quid Ikari never figures it out."

"It's... not exactly discreet."

She laughed, "Bah. He doesn't even remember that I exist. Now, help me into the machine like a good lad, aye?"

* * *

 **2015 A.D. - Bethany Base**

Mari Makinami Illustrious had just finished the longest hot shower of her young life and was toweling off when a random NERV-lette popped her head into the bathroom and handed the young pilot candidate a secure satcom phone, saying she had a call.

"Hiiiiii," she greeted enthusiastically and with a killer saccharine smile, "How may I help youuu?"

"Hello Ms. Illustrious, this is Commander Ikari." _Fuck_.

"Ah, Commander, sir! Um, hi, how can I help you?" She repeated dumbly, berating herself mentally for not coming up with something better to say.

"NERV has completed the review of your Evangelion pilot candidacy." He said simply, and paused. She waited with bated breath. This entire training regimen and review period was the most important part of her attempted infiltration of the pilot corps.

"You have exceeded expectations. Congratulations. You have been designated as the Fifth Child."

"Y-yes! YES! I mean, thank you! Sir." Her excitement was genuine.

A burst of static filled the line and then a robotic voice announced, "Cryptographic security achieved. Link fully secured."

"Mari," Gendo said.

"Ah, yes sir?"

"Mari _Makinami_ Illustrious?"

"Um, yes?"

"You and your mother owe me five quid."

She dropped the phone.


	14. Chapter 14

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 14**

 _ **Angelic Daze.**_

 **2015 A.D., +2 Days After Sachiel**

 **NERV HQ**

Gendo's lips cracked into a smirk as the clammer of Mari's fumbled phone tinned and pinged in the background. _You've still got it!_ he congratulated himself. Successfully scaring the shit out of the sixteen-year-old-would-be-saboteur at the other end of the encrypted sat-com call was definitely the highlight of his morning so far.

He hummed a little ditty to himself while he waited for her to pick the phone back up off the floor.

"Uhmmm, I'm-I'm sorry sir, " the flustered girl finally said, "I don't think I heard you properly, I-I dropped the phone just now, I'm so sorry."

His smile widened but his voice remained calm and cold. "I said, Ms. Illustrious, that you and your mother owe me _five quid_."

"Sir, I'm afraid I don't…" she was trying to play it off.

"Ms. Illustrious. I can make this very easy for you. I _know_ ," he stated firmly, " _Everything_. I know who you are, I know _what_ you are."

She was silent.

"I even know about the passenger you've brought along for the ride."

Her quick breathing became deathly regular, it actually sent a shiver through him to hear the change in her demeanor over the secure line.

"How?" Like ice. Her voice was angry, coiled like a serpent.

"Let's say that I've… seen things. You people wouldn't believe," he said.

* * *

 **Year Indeterminate. Post Third-Impact.**

Mari Makinami Illustrious was the most paradoxical existence in the post-human collective, no doubt due in large part to the unique nature of her self-cloned soul. Gendo had been working with her as an adjunct advisor for what felt like several eons at this point, and he had to admit that she had grown on him.

The fact that she was certifiably insane had actually been of great benefit to both he and Kozo's remnant personality as she was able to fill in gaps in their plans that they alone might not have accounted for.

Even their Angelic guest found her presence delightful, if confounding.

Over time she had pointed out numerous loopholes that Gendo had managed to abuse in their mostly-incorporeal circumstances. Like the fact that Gendo now knew most of the major world languages that existed before Third Impact. Or that she had managed to create convincing replicas of video games to entertain his crew of reincarnated helpers.

She had become an asset. A friend, even.

"How do you recommend I enlist your services?" he asked, thinking back on their earlier conversations. How would he deal with her in the past? He owed it to her not to let SEELE capture her and experiment on her unique syncing ability. He had a vague memory of her being thrown bodily into an active Eva core - he was pretty sure it had been her at least.

But now Mari had reincarnated as a fusion between her original form and her cloned daughter-self. She looked eternally sixteen, but forewent the trademark glasses Gendo remembered. Her hair was a long sheet instead of the twintails she had adopted after Yui "broke up with her" (the one-sided nature of the relationship and the similarity to his own situation was not lost on him).

She hmm'd out loud, kicking a leg out: "I think you should just drop a bombshell on her/me. Mock her in some way that only she would know about, ya know? Do it early. Don't let her get to NERV HQ first. Subvert Kaji, maybe? Use one of the key-codes that I memorized for all the possible FUBAR situations we dreamed up, that should do it. Hey, did I ever tell you about the day I actually got in the tube?"

He shook his head, he hadn't heard that story.

A half hour of not-time later, he had. And God help him, he had laughed.

So had Kozo Fuyutsuki. He thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "So wait," he tried to restate, "You're telling me, that while Yui was bawling her eyes out in front of your casket, you had just finished having the orgy of your life and _then_ got to watch the footage of your own funeral?"

She laughed, "Oh yeah, it was, honestly, it was the best," she glared playfully at Gendo, "I mean, c'mon. Yui was a _bitch_. And Gendo 'prime'", she made air quotes with her fingers in the British style, not the Japanese, "he was sitting there playing on his phone. _Jerk_."

"My behavior hardly mattered. You faked your own death, Mari." Gendo reminded her, a little miffed for getting called out.

"But youuuu didn't knowwww that!" she sing-songed.

"So, roughly, what percentage of your original personality got written into your clone?" Kozo asked. He was extremely curious considering SEELE had been working on a digitization backup plan in case Third Impact was delayed - they'd do anything to stay 'alive' even if they weren't, strictly speaking, living.

"I actually worked that out. About 42%."

"That's it?" Kozo asked in disbelief.

"Explains a lot," Gendo huffed.

"Doesn't it though? I mean, I got 100% of the extra soul, but as far as memories and personalities go, it was definitely a mixed bag. She left a lot of notes though. Ha. Most of 'em were 'Gendo is going to destroy the world' and 'Only we can stop them!' sort of things mixed in with a lot of backdoors to abuse my mom's/our connection to MI-6."

Gendo nodded, "And you actually knew Queen Diana? Your mother, I mean."

Mari nodded, "She was a great lay too."

Kozo choked. Gendo wondered how someone could choke in the extra-dimensional purgatory they were in, but Kozo had managed it.

"Kidding!" Mari stuck out her tongue, "God. You two. Are. So. Gullible."

"I…" Gendo started.

"She honestly wasn't that great in bed," Mari nodded to herself.

* * *

 **2015 A.D., +2 Days After Sachiel**

 **Bethany Base**

Mari could barely hold on to her rapidly slipping sanity. Gendo _Fucking_ Ikari knew, he knew about her! And now he was quoting her (or her mother's?) favorite movie. _Blade Runner_.

"I don't suppose…" she carefully responded, "That you've seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion?"

The other side of the line crackled briefly before his voice responded, "Indeed. I've even seen C-beams glittering in the dark, off the Tanhauser gate."

 _Oh god_. She thought. He was speaking in flawless English. That was _not_ in the dossier. Gendo Ikari was a Japanese man who took a few years of highschool English classes and could barely say: "This is a pen" according to every file the British had. He was a genius, it was known, but his genius lay in metaphysical biology and _being a murderous cunt_.

"The question," he continued, "is whether or not your memories have all been lost. You might say, like tears... in rain."

"How are you doing this, sir? How would you know to say these words to me? We never..."

Mari, at that moment, was convinced that she was about to die. That she was on the receiving end of some brutal verbal smackdown before a NERV kill-team came pouring into the bathroom and swept her with gunfire. She was compromised. Someone had broken. SEELE had gotten to her team, she was certain. She was vulnerable and it had nothing to do with being naked and cold in a bathroom. It was the sheer power his words held over her in that still moment.

"Ms. Illustrious. I believe you might be familiar with something called: Scenario _BTF-88_?"

The transition from despair and hopelessness to confusion, then recognition, then surprise, then _awe_ filled her. Then incredulity.

"You're shitting me."

"Language, Ms. Illustrious. Ah, and _you_ said that it had a 'Leather Pants' twist to it, but you didn't elucidate."

"Wait, wait, sir, are you... " she couldn't believe this. She had memorized the 'Big List of Things That Could Conceivably Happen.' No one but her knew about the list, because _she had invented it_. BTF-88 was her special code for time travel. Leather Pants, well, that _was_ certainly a big twist to everything she knew about Gendo Ikari.

"Are you, like, the good-Biff?" she whispered into the phone, bending over to keep anyone hearing from the outside.

Many thousands of kilometers away Gendo pinched the bridge of his nose. "Back to the Future? Now I get it. Obvious, in retrospect. You said I would be surprised and then feel stupid."

"Holy fucking bollocks. I have _so many questions_."

"I'm sure you do. But they'll have to wait, "he said, "We can talk at length once you're safe aboard your exit strategy."

"You're having me extracted?"

"Yes. As soon as you've helped me destroy Bethany Base."


	15. Chapter 15

**Evangelion: Rebuild a Legend - Chapter 15**

 _ **Of Broken Things**_

 **2015 A.D., +2 Days After Sachiel**

 **NERV Germany**

"You're wha-aaaaaaat!?" Asuka cried out, jumping up from her desk.

Kaji shook his head in bemused resignation, leaning casually against the doorframe from where he had delivered the news to his erstwhile charge. Her assigned quarters in the officers' barracks were small, but unlike his own (admittedly) spartan room she had quite a bit of personal effects strewn about.

Tidy, but the tidiness of a teenage girl. He imagined all of it would fill quite a few boxes.

He, on the other hand, preferred to keep nothing around. It made leaving easy. He liked easy.

"I'm on my way to the transport now - ah," he scratched his chin stubble, then awkwardly gestured down at the single suitcase at his feet, "Well, sorry kid, short notice but -"

Asuka was having none of it, her face flustered - suddenly red - it made him vaguely uncomfortable knowing she was stubbornly holding back tears.

"But you're attached to _me_. I'm _your_ responsibility! You're _literally_ my guardian!" she restated, straining to keep from yelling. Gone was the trademark whine of her earlier years, now she was speaking harshly in clipped bursts.

She didn't need to be overheard by her neighbors down the hall.

Mustn't be.

Commander Ikari had proved for all to see that Asuka needed to be _more_ than just the Eva pilot with the most formal training. She had to be _more_ than one of the youngest officers in European Air Force history. More than the Pride of the Fatherland.

His performance, no, his _domination_ of the battle field - it set an incredibly high bar. That Angel hadn't even stood a chance.

And Gendo Ikari wasn't even a real pilot.

Hell, his sync rate alone… Asuka realized she was distracting herself from the abrupt sitrep change. One part of her brain was busy coping, another part was getting… _emotional_.

Bury it. Yes. Bury it deep down where it can't hurt you, Asuka. Bury Kaji: think of NERV. Stop staring at _him_.

Yes. She had to be better: she had to be the very model of an officer. She had to be perfect. At all times. She had to act like a grownup. Not that little girl she left behind. She's dead. Buried. Be more. Not a child.

A woman.

 _OK_ , she breathed to herself.

"It's just - you've been with me, for… I just," she stumbled, "I mean, this is all I get?"

She resorted to a demanding tone. "A ten minute warning? This is _it?_ After all our time together?"

He sighed, fumbling in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

"Who's even taking over for you?" She let out a bitter laugh. "Can't be Misato - she's already with the Third Child. Don't tell me it's one of those Section 2 _arschlochs?"_

"No, Asuka. Congrats. You've been emancipated."

She stared at him unblinkingly for a few seconds.

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm not. You're an adult now in the eyes of the government _and_ the military."

She put her hands on her hips.

"Well whoop-dee-doo, I _already was_ , pretty much. God," she huffed. "Where are you even going? Or can you not say?" she dared him.

Kaji handed her a datapad containing his new orders - orders specifically marked "For Your Eyes Only."

 _Sure_. If he's going to flaunt security laws then who gives a damn, right? She flicked through the virtual pages, skimming over the mostly inscrutable Japanese and searching out the English keywords.

"Bethany Base?" she murmured to herself, then handed it back to him, "What's in Bethany Base?"

"Not what. Who."

She heard a sharp click and looked up expectantly, then scowled.

"No smoking," she chided.

Kaji had already managed to take a drag from the cigarette. He leaned his head to the side and exhaled out into the hallway, ignoring the German anti-smoking reminder emblazoned in big red letters on the opposite wall.

He chuckled, then walked over and swiped rightwards on the datapad she was holding. A picture appeared.

"The Fifth Child," he said.

Asuka stared at the photo of the girl with the irreverent smirk happily jutting her chest out in a garishly pink plugsuit.

" _That_ glasses-wearing _bimbo_!" she screeched, then slapped a hand over her mouth. Her momentary embarrassment transitioned to renewed annoyance at this turn of events, and she flounced back down on her pullout bed.

"I had wondered where she had gone, you know? I thought we would train here together," she said.

Kaji had already burnt down half his cigarette and flicked ashes right outside her door, earning an eye twitch from Asuka.

"Keep in mind you've been training since you were five. She started a year ago," he flipped the datapad around to her again, showing off a series of charts. "As you can see, she had something of an 'accelerated' schedule."

" _mein Gott_."

The things she saw on the screen were insane, but before she could examine them any further he filched it back and tucked it away in his jacket. Asuka ran her hands through her hair and unconsciously tugged on a hair clip.

It was a thing Kaji noticed she did when she was off her game, which was rare. She wore them so often outside the simulator that she forgot they were there most of the time. They were her status symbol. The thing that drew attention away from her youth and to the fact that she was an Evangelion pilot.

"You have orders too," he said, pulling out another datapad and handing it to her as a peace offering. Hopefully she'd understand he wasn't the only one bound to the whims of greater powers.

She took the pad and unlocked it with her thumb.

/ SORYU, ASUKA LANGLEY. Captain. Detached NERV Auxiliary: Germany.

/ PRIMARY MISSION PARAMETER CHANGE

/ 1. Activation of Evangelion Production Model: Unit-02

/ 2. Live Fire Training and Practice for Rapid Deployment Maneuvers

/ 3. Preparation for Relocation to NERV HQ

/ TERTIARY MISSION PARAMETERS

/ 1. Formation of Pilot Corp Training Group

/ 2. Remote Training of Newly Inducted Forces

/ 3. Squad Combat Leader at NERV HQ

"Oh my god," she breathed out, "We're activating Unit-02!"

Kaji was done smoking and stubbed out the butt of his cigarette.

"Looks like Mari isn't the only one being 'accelerated'," he said smugly, stepping into the hallway.

She grunted in his direction as he hefted his suitcase and waved goodbye; Asuka looked for all the world like she was completely absorbed in the details of her newly cut orders.

He never saw the first tear winding down towards her chin, and as his VTOL transport left the ground he never even spared a glance down at the barracks of the child soldier he'd shattered and left behind.

Kanji's only real focus for the last hour had been consumed in finding a way to complete Gendo's latest off the books task and stay alive.

Long enough to get the truth, at least.

Reaching into his jacket he pulled out the datapad again, fingering a few commands and wiping its memory clean. No one was riding in the back with him, so there was no one to complain when he broke it in half on his knee, opened a hatch to a scream of frigid air, and tossed out the broken halves from 3,000 feet.

He closed the hatch, leaning back in the rough jumpseat.

" _Adam_ , huh."

* * *

 **2004 A.D. Tokyo-2**

The light was harsh.

The chair was metal. Cold. Uncomfortable.

"Ryoji, Kaji. Age 19." His interlocutor sat across a plain, wooden table. A salvaged relic from a pre-Second Impact IKEA.

"Yes."

A page flipped in a binder.

"When was the first time you killed a man?"

Kaji didn't need to think.

"September 14th, 2000."

"Who? Where? Why?"

He was calm.

"A looter. North of Mito, little town - it's gone now. He took something important from me. There was a struggle. He died. I didn't."

A pencil scratched something down.

"Important, hmm. Weapon?"

"He had a knife, I had some broken glass."

More notes jotted down.

"And the first time you killed a man when ordered to do so?"

"January 2nd, 2001. A woman, actually. Mistress to a Diet member who was threatening to compromise the construction of the new capital."

"Or so you were told."

Kaji leaned back.

"Or so I was told."

"Weapon?"

"Garrote."

"Disposition of the body?"

His eyes flitted up and to the side for a moment. The light was bright.

"Wrapped, weighted, dropped into the sea."

"You had help?"

"No. It was a quiet mission. No message to be sent. Just… containment." He leaned forward. "Mission parameters called for a single agent."

"Figures the JSDF would use a kid for it. Popped your cherry at what,16?" An answer wasn't expected. "So you have no issue killing women?"

"No."

"Kids?"

"Yes."

"Won't? Or you just have issues?"

"Issues."

More scratchings of pencil on paper.

"We can work with that." The other man had a satisfied look on his face. The binder closed with a loud snap.

"Welcome to the PSIA, Agent Ryoji."

He was relieved. "Thank you."

A folder slid its way across the table.

"I'm sure you won't have any issues in using your youthful charms to secure vital information?"

"Seduction is right up my alley, sir." Kaji opened the folder, scanning the dossier. "You're sending me to a university?"

"You'll be enrolled by morning. Majoring in Political Science."

"Understood."

He looked through the paperwork, stopping at the photo of his target.

"Well, at least she's cute. What's her na-" his words caught up with his eyes as he read her name off the page.

The man chuckled, "You said you wanted answers. His kid is a good place to start."

Kaji nodded.

She'd be a good start, alright.

* * *

 **2004 A.D., Waseda II University**

The music throbbed, pulsing through Kaji's body in sync with his buzz. He had drunk enough to look legit, popped a pill or two to be loose enough to fit into the neo-rave that had organically overtaken the sorority house.

"Shit," he stumbled, pushing into a coed wearing, well it was too dark to tell what was going on down below, but up top it was all candy strings and pasties. "Sorry," he said, sloshing his plastic cup around for good measure.

The ravette looked like she was into him but he had already pushed past further into the crowd, his eyes intent on his target in the corner. The DJ switched it up and lasers started playing across the ceiling to an electro-funk remix.

Kaji was trying to make his way over to the far couch without being obvious. The flickering lights helped, the combination of staccato rhythm and ecstasy kept the heads bobbing and the bodies gyrating.

He was pretty sure her invisible security detail - the one she didn't know about - was blind to his approach as he zigzagged through the masses.

Finally he made it, plopping himself unceremoniously on an empty spot on the couch next to the girl with the long purple hair.

"Taken!" She yelled over the noise, pointing beneath him.

"Thanks!" He yelled back, swishing his cup and taking a drink, pretending to mishear.

"Dude, I said, taken!" she tried again, shifting her whole body to face him.

Wow. She was gorgeous. and that little black dress she was wearing left nothing to the imagination.

"No, I'm good, I already took some!" Kaji yelled back, waving his hand in faux-refusal.

She looked flummoxed for a second, did this guy think she was offering him drugs? She was about to scoot closer to him to shoo him off when a brown haired girl in the university standard uniform popped out of the crowd holding two drinks.

"Misato! Take one, hurry!" Ritsuko shouted, trying to keep from spilling the liquor. "Who's he?"

"I dunno!" she started, but Kaji was fast on the interrupt.

"Hi! I'm Kaji! Thanks for letting me sit with you two! It's crazy out there!"

Misato tried again: "But we didn't let -"

Ritsuko sat down quickly in Misato's lap, one knee draped off towards Kaji. "No problem!" Misato tried to complain but Ritsuko didn't let her. "Shut uppppp!" she hissed loudly in Misato's ear, "He's cute!"

Then Ritsuko turned towards Kaji and drunkenly yelled, "My friend thinks you're cute!" She giggled, leaning back and hugging Misato, shifting around so that the confused girl was pushed more towards the hot guy sitting two inches away from them.

"I'm Ritsuko!"

"Kaji!"

"You already said that!"

"Oh yeah!" he was reminded, rather lamely.

"My friend thinks you're hot!"

Misato swiftly tried to punch Ritsuko in the shoulder. "I didn't say that! Sto-oppp!"

"Tell your friend I think she's hot too!"

Ritsuko beamed, shaking her hair back. "I know, right? Misato, say 'hi' to him! How're you gonna get laid if you don't talk to him!?"

Before Misato or Kaji could say anything Ritsuko kept going. "Misato, this is Misato by the way, she needs to get laid sooooooo bad."

"No I don't!"

"Yes you do!"

"No! I don't!"

"Drunk girl says what?"

"What!?"

And without warning Ritsuko pulled Misato's head in and locked lips with her. Kaji stared: this wasn't in the dossier. It might be the drugs but he was definitely turned on by the show.

Especially since it wasn't a short little kiss, no, they were still going at it as his arousal grew.

Suddenly they broke it off and Ritsuko laughed while Misato yelled out a loud: "Fuck it!" and drained her entire cup, giggling.

Ritsuko turned back to him while holding Misato's cheeks between her hands.

"See? She only does this when she's super drunk! She's straight as an arrow!"

"Ritsu-chan!" Misato complained. Then she turned her head to follow Ritsuko's gaze.

"Fiiiiiiiiine! God, you're such an enabler!"

Ritsuko laughed again and tossed her cup over the couch, snuggling up.

"You're. The One. Who corrupted. Me!" Ritsuko exclaimed.

Misato was looking at Kaji with something a little more… hungry, than she had been before. The music had just lost its swell, getting ready for the next song.

"Hey!" she yelled over to the handsome guy with the stubble, "You wanna get out of here?!"

 _Score_.


End file.
